116 lation, the so-called General Regulation, which was to establish the administrative norms common to all the colleges. The instructions or regulations were to be drawn up on the basis of Swedish models, and, in an ukaz at the end of April 1718, Peter decreed that “all the colleges shall now, on the basis of the Swedish regulation, draft [regulations] concerning all matters and rules in points, and those points in the Swedish regulation which are not compatible with the situation here are to be drawn up in accordance with their opinions, be adapted to Russian conditions as far as possible. The colleges themselves were to submit proposals for their regulations to the Senate, which was to draw up the final editions of the regulations. “And in the Senate,” declared the tsar, “the disputed questions are to be solved and opinions are to be given, and then a presentation is to be prepared at which I shall be present and give my decision. It was difficult, however, for the colleges to draft instructions both reproducing the most important aspects of the respective Swedish colleges and at the same time taking into consideration “the situation” in Russia. In some instances the Swedish colleges did not have instructions containing a sufficiently detailed description of their activities. This was the case, for example, with the kammarkollegium^ which at the time of the Russian reforms did not have instructions corresponding to its actual functions. In the case of the kamer-kollegiia, therefore, the Russian instructions had to be drafted on the basis of Heinrich Pick’s written description of the tasks and routines of the Swedish college. The Russian legislators were presented with great problems when it came to adapting Swedish administrative law to Russian conditions. The Swedish legislative materials often embodied concepts lacking parallels in Russian administrative tradition. Swedish phenomena such as the resumption or reduktion of crown estates and incomes during the reign of Charles XI were usually recognized as such, and clauses relating to them were usually removed when found irrelevant to Russian conditions. The first draft of the regulations for the kamer-kollegiia, for example, included a chapter entitled “Concerningthe reduktionen" (Oredukovanii), whichwas finally struck out by Peter himself, who pointed out that the phenomenon of resumed crown estates was unknown in Russia.^^® In other cases where the characteristically Swedish aspects of an administrative concept were not immediately recognized, the text was simply translated into Russian. Sometimes it was later discovered that, because the necessary social preThe Swedish administrative regulations, then, were to ” 312 ” 313 314 ZA (no. 49), 60. ZA (no. 51), 61. See p. 151. See p 312 313
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