176 two memoranda on the state of the kamer-kollegiia}~* He directed sharp criticisms against the instruktsiia of 1719, writing among other things that: that instruktsiia, which serves as the basis for the treasury activities, was neither drawn up on the basis of the Swedish one nor even less on the basis of any other state’s system; it does not provide a sufficient description of the treasury tasks, of the differences in their character, nature, and properties, and the resuiting difference in their administration, distribution, and calculation; it shows no method by what means and in which order they are to be dealt with, how they are to be handled, regulated, and performed, what is to come first, what is to come afterwards, what is to be done at the same time, or to be kept separate; in it there are no directions for a suitable chancellery plan which the employees of the treasury, from the highest to the lowest, should follow in the performance of their duties: in one word, it contains nothing which an instruktsiia should contain; some sections are impossible to implement {khimerichny) and everything is so confused that not a single point is in its natural place. What Kochlus meant by saying that the Russian instruktsiia had not been drawn up on the basis of the Swedish model was apparently that the text had been formulated much too superficially to be able to reproduce the Swedish cameral system in its proper context. Kochius also stated that the kamer-kollegiia had not become the central organ for the collection of revenues intended to result from the reform. Instead, the collection of revenues had been spread among several colleges: the collection of the soul tax (podushnaia podad) had been relegated to the krigs-kollegiia, the revenues from the mint and the state iron foundries had been put under the supervision of the berg- i manufaktur-kollegiia, and the kommerts-kollegiia had been given the responsibility of collecting the customs duties. Other colleges, too, were charged with various tasks of fiscal administration.^'" Kochius went on to claim that the college had been unable to establish its operations because it lacked knowledgeable personnel and because no real division of labor had been introduced. The foreigners in the employ of the college had little knowledge of the Russian fiscal system, and it was “understandable that one who does not know about the work cannot 1. “Unmassgebliche reflexions betreffend das Cammarwesen in dem Russischen Reich” September 24, 1723, see Miliukov, 506—507. 2. “In what manner the external organization of the kamer-kollegiia here can be launched in the foreign manner,” November 21, 1723, TsGADA, f. 248 delo 58 11. 72—83. Miliukov, 507. '■« Ibid., 508. William Slant, “Russian Central Governmental Institutions, 1725—1741” (PhD. dissertation, Cornell University 1956), 181; B. L. Viazemskii, Verkhovnyi tainyi sovet (St. Petersburg, 1909), 248.
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