115 Against this background it is understandable that administrative legislation, just as legislation in general, was so extensive during Peter the Great’s reign. Whereas the number of ukazes printed during the second half of the seventeenth century averaged some thirty-six per year, this number increased to an average of some one hundered sixty ukazes annually during the first half of the eighteenth century.^®® If one were to include all the ukazes and other legislative acts never appearing in print, the average would be significantly higher. The good of the state, that is, the economic and political stability required for the maintenance of the state apparatus, was thus served best, according to the absolutistic cameralist teachings, by intensive legislative activity. All the newly established administrative institutions were provided with detailed instructions for the performance of their duties, and these instructions were to be followed to the letter by the officials involved. Oftentimes vigorous punishment was prescribed for any official guilty of violating any administrative regulation, thus giving Petrine legislation the character of legalized terror exercised by the highest state authority.^”® A legislative act from 1718, for example, stipulated that “the main thing is that one keep in mind one’s position and our ukazes and not put anything off until the next day, for how can a state be governed when ukazes are not observed; therefore, contempt for ukazes is not in any respect different from treason.” If an official made a mistake in the performance of his duties, the letter of the law considered his action comparable to treason. N. I. Pavlenko made the following lucid comment about this passage in the law: To compare officials who violated ukazes with traitors was no happenstance. For Peter, ideal governmental organs were ones which resembled barracks, and the officials of these organs were to be like the military commanders and carry out ukazes with the same inflexibility as that with which soldiers and officers carried out military regulations. Great weight was attached in the Russian collegial reform to the careful description and regulation of the duties and responsibilities of the various new administrative organs, something which had not existed for the prikaz administration. Each college was to have a separate set of instructions to guide its operations, while at the same time there was to be a special regu311 N. I. Pavlenko, “Idei absoliutizma v zakonodatel’stve XVIII v.,” in N. M. Druzhinin, ed., Absoliutizm v Rossii (XVII—XVIII v.). Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu so drtia rozhdeniia i 40-letiiu nauchoi i pedagogicheskoi deiateVnosti B. B. Kafcngauza (Moscow, 1964), 416. Pavlenko (1973), 91. ZA (no. 334), 290. Pavlenko (1973), 86. »08 309 311
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