182 The tendencies toward centralization in the fiscal administration which appeared during the last decades of the seventeenth century were connected with the increasing percentage of permanent units within the army. The need for cash grew larger and larger, forcing the government to systematize the collection and administration of revenues. The widely dispersed system of prikazy was unable to satisfy the increased demands for revenue in a satisfactory manner. The budget described above proved to be unique in seventeenth-century Russia. Not until the beginning of the eighteenth century was an organ for fiscal administration created and charged with controlling the state’s fiscal situation. This organ, the Blizhniaia kantseliariia was affiliated with the Duma and its task was to solicit monthly and annual reports from all the existing prikazy about such things as their administration of funds. On the basis of this reporting, the Blizhniaia kantseliariia was to draft a survey of the finances of the prikaz administration and point out the surpluses at hand in each prikaz. These estimates, which were identical with that of 1680, were drawn up by the Blizhniaia kantseliariia from 1702 until 1710, dealing with the years 1701 through 1709. The war against Sweden initiated in 1700 required a vigorous mobilization of the country’s economic resources and the Blizhniaia kantseliariia fulfilled the functions of a central clearing house which could provid exact information as to whether there were any funds available in any of the many administrative treasuries for the formation of new milltary units or for other purposes. In connection with the guberniia reform of 1708—09, however, the task of drawing up the yearly fiscal survey was transferred to the governors, who were to evaluate the economic situation at annual meetings held in St. Petersburg. Tables showing the revenues and expenditures for the years 1710 and 1711 were drawn up at such meetings and differed from the fiscal surveys made for the preceding years in that they provided prognoses for the future. After 1711, however, no fiscal plan was drawn up until the issue was once again raised by the introduction of the collegial administrative system. The general auditor of the Blizhniaia kantseliariia, Vasilii Zotov, described the period 1711—1718 in the following way: in the beginning lists were sent in every four months—before the founding of the Senate to the Blizhniaia kantseliariia, but then it was decreed they should be sent to the Senate; and in the beginning such lists were sent from some places, but now they are not sent from anyplace at all; without these it is impossible to see either revenues, expenditures, deficits, or improprieties on the part of gover197 198 199 The fiscal surveys for 1701—1709 are published in Miliukov, 578—579. Iasnopol’skii, 37. Miliukov, 312. 197 198 199
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