RB 29

149 the respective districts.^” It has been claimed that the new arrangement was introduced for reasons of war finance; the disposition of revenue at its source for the purposes for which it was intended, it is argued, would ensure the maintenance of the armyd’ Not until the founding of the kamer-kollegiia in 1719 did the fiscal administration by prikazy definitely come to an end and the collection of state revenues finally become centralized in the hands of one administrative organ. The kamer-kollcgiia occupied a central position in the system of colleges for which Peter began planning in 1717. The economic basis for the newly created administrative organization and for the armed forces—that is, for the governmental apparatus which was requisite for the development of the absolute monarchy and, at the same time, necessary for the monarchy’s ability to maintain political power—was to be secured by the kamer-kollegiia. In a letter to the tsar, Heinrich Pick emphasized that “das Cammerwesen ist das wichtigste Werck in alien Reichen und insonderheit in dieser Monarchie.” The Russian kamer-kollegiia was given draft instructions in 1719, and the ukaz issued by the Senate in February announcing those instructions (instruktsiia) stated, among other things, that: According to His High Lord’s ukaz, the Ruling Senate has ordered that a copy of the instruktsiia for the kamer-kollcgiia, which His Tsarist Majesty deigned to hear in the Senate, and which he decreed should apply as it has been corrected, but which because of His Tsarist Majesty’s absence in the field has not been signed by His Majesty’s own hand, shall be given by the Senate to this college, and the college shall administer according to this instruktsiia until it is signed personally by His Tsarist Majesty. In his researches, N. A. Voskresenskii found four draft versions of the instructions for the Russian kamer-kollegiia.These four drafts, referred to below as drafts A, B, C, and D, enable us to follow the evolution of the instruktsiia, and this in turn provides important information as to how the Russians attempted, in the case of this college, to adapt the structure of the Swedish kammarkollegium to Russian conditions. The first, or A, draft is dated December 2, 1718, while the final version, the D draft, was approved by the tsar on December 11, 1719 and eventuB. B. KafI'NGAUZ, “Finansovaia reforma i gosudarstvennyi biudzhet,” Ocherki (1954), 394. ■" Pavel Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII stoletiia (2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1905), 270. ■*- A. R. Cederberg, Heinrich Pick. Ein Beitrag zur russischen Geschichtc des XVIII. Jahrhunderts (Dorpat/Tartu, 1930), Beilage 4, 96. •’» TsGADA, f. 248 delo 654 1. 17. “*■* N. A. Voskresenskii, Zakonadatcl’nye akty Petra I (Leningrad, 1945), 553. This work is cited throughout this study as ZA.

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