136 The salary problems of the foreign officials nonetheless continued on into the next year. According to the instructions for the shtats-kontorkollegiia, which were drawn up on the model of those of the Swedish statskontoret, salaries were to be paid out one third at a time, three times a year,^®- but, in a letter to the tsar in March 1719, the foreigners complained that the shtats-kontor-kollegiia had not made any salary payments. These complaints had first been lodged with the college, itself, but the college had argued that no payments could be made, since the tsar had not issued any ukaz for the payment of salaries. The college had also pointed out that it had not yet had sufficient time to draw up a salary budget for the empire.^**^ According to the letter mentioned above, the salaries of the foreigners amounted to 59,615 rubles for the first half of 1719.^®^ Thus, the foreign staffing of the colleges was very expensive, and, as will be discussed below, the number of foreigners in the colleges was reduced when it was found that they were unable to bring about the expected results, namely the establishment of collegial operating procedures according to the Swedish model. As we have seen above, conversion to the Ortodox faith traditionally meant that one automatically became a Russian subject.^®^ This new legal status reduced the freedom of movement of the convert, completely denying himand his family the right to move away from the Russian empire, and binding him to Russia forever. When internal passports were introduced during the reign of Peter the Great, notes were made in the passports of converts permanently forbidding them to leave the realm without permission. Anyone violating this regulation was liable to the death sentence. In the same manner, converts were forbidden under threat of heavy punishment from living with non-Russians or non-Orthodox individuals.^®® These conditions were modified during Peter’s reign. Whereas conversion to Orthodoxy had been the only means of becoming a Russian subject, Peter introduced a civil oath of loyalty, which gave foreigners the status of subjects of the Russian tsar. Margarete Woltner, who has studied the constitutional situation of Western European residents of Russia up through the reign of Peter the Great, has stated that: Während friiher das Bekenntnis zur russischen Kirche staatsrechtliche Folgen hatte, tritt nun der Staat neben die Kirche, um sie im Laufe der Zeit zu einem 397 7.A (no. 424), 597. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 605 1. 41—41v. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 605 II. 50—52. Woltner, 48. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 58. 302 39ft
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