RB 29

127 one secretaryship, and one position as a scrivener—were to be held by foreigners.^^^ But this budget did not become the recognized norm for the colleges. Instead, the colleges followed the personnel budget drawn up by Heinrich Pick, which called for a considerably larger number of foreign officials, namely twelve out of a total staff of twenty-five for each college. When the colleges submitted their proposals for personnel budgets to the Senate, therefore, it turned out that seven of them—excluding the kollegiia inostrannykh del and the admiralteiskaia kollegiia, which had been delayed in their organizational work—calculated that they needed ninety-three foreigners to meet their staff needs.^^'"’ No fewer than four ukazes were issued between 1717 and 1720 to the effect that Swedish prisoners of war were to be offered the opportunity to fill positions in the Russian colleges.^^® Nonetheless, the recruiting of personnel for the colleges among the prisoners of war went poorly. It is evident from the ukazes that the Russians felt there were two circumstances in particular which made the prisoners of war reluctant to enter Russian service. First of all, they were afraid they would be given military assignments, which would make them traitors to their own country, and, secondly, there was the fear that, once having begun to serve in the colleges, they would not be allowed to return to their homeland upon the conclusion of peace. The ukazes thus emphasized that officers sent out to the gubernii to recruit prisoners of war for the tsar’s service were to “confirm for them the notion of that service, that it is civilian, and not military, in which they will never be used,” and to give them the promise that “after the conclusion of the war . . . they shall be allowed to travel to their fatherland.” The differentiation made in these ukazes between civilian and military service, that is, that the former should not be considered as compromising as the latter, did not, however, reflect the real state of affairs. Had it been discovered that a Swedish officer or soldier returning from Russian captivity had voluntarily served in the Russian colleges, the person in question would have been considered a traitor just as much as if he had held a military commission in the Russian army, and the Swedish prisoners of war were well aware of that fact. When Nikolaus Hoffman, a Swede, agreed to enter Russian service in the revizion-kollegiia in 1719, therefore, he lA (no. 261), 216—217. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 654 11. 179—182. PSZ, V, no. 3,101, p. 506; no. 3,259, p. 602; no. 3,478, p. 775; VI, no. 3,497, p. 122. See also Ia. Grot, “O prebyvanii plennykh shvedov v Rossii pri Petre Velikom,” Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 77 (1853), part 2, 124. PSZ, V, no. 3,101, p. 507; no. 3.259, p. 603.

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