RB 29

208 mental points of agreement have been demonstrated which confirm in a decisive way the hypothesis that the Russian fiscal administration was, in its legal formalities, a reproduction of its Swedish model. But what about the application of the instruktsiia} Did the shtats-kontor-kollegiia ever perform all the tasks assigned to it by its instmktsiia, or performthem in the manner prescribed by that set of instructions? In view of the extremely insufficient source materials, it is impossible to answer these questions in any detail, but there is no doubt that the college was in fact set up and that it was even charged with the administrative tasks described in the instriiktsiiar^^ During the reign of Peter the Great, however, this college never drew up a state budget on the Swedish model. A survey of revenues and expenditures {tabel' prikhoda i raskhoda) was in fact drawn up for the year 1725, but it was of the same type as the tables for 1710 and 1711 described above.-*^' As will be discussed in greater detail in the section on the local administration, the most important reason for the failure of the shtats-kontor-kollegiia to develop its administrative routines in the manner sketched in its instruktsiia was that not all of the materials necessary for the budget planning process were delivered to the karner-kollegia and the shtats-kontor-kollegiia in the prescribed manner. The reform of the local administration proved to be much too revolutionary for it to be possible, in the short time available, both to set up the apparatus and to lay the basis for a new set of administrative practices. In addition to this, as has been pointed out above, the instruktsiia for the shtats-kontorkollegiia was unclear on several points, and not least of all when it came to the manner in which the budget was to be drawm up. The need to bring greater clarity to this process is confirmed by the detailed report on it presented to the Senate by Heinrich Pick in December 1723. This memorandum, which has been quoted above in various contexts, bore the title The archival catalogue for the shtats-kontor-kollegiia provides clear evidence that the college’s area of responsibility was in fact the same as that described in its instruktsiia', TsGADA, f. 279 opis’ 1 chast’ 6—8. Iasnopol’skii, 53. The fiscal review for 1725 is printed in I. Kirilov, Tsvetushchee sostoianie Vserossiiskogo Gosudarstva v kakoe nachal, privel i ostavil neizrechennymi trudami Petr Velikii, edited by B. A. Rybakov et al. (Moscow, 1977), 339—364. The terms “general budget" and “general extract" used in the instruktsiia came into use at a considerably later date. In the budget materials which survive from Catherine II’s reign, one finds references to the instruktsiia of 1719 for the shtats-kontor-kollegiia, including the following introduction to the fiscal overview for 1765: “The general budget presented to the Empress for the coming year 1765, compiled in the shtatskontor-kollegiia in fulfillment of article four of its instruktsiia of 1719, over annual expenditures in the entire empire according to existing budgets and special all-gracious ukazes from the Ruling Senate." See A. N. Kulomzin, “Finansovye dokumenty tsarstvovaniia Ekateriny II," SIRIO, XXVIII, 82.

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