211 As for the method of auditing, the instruktion for the kammarrevisionen issued in 1695 prescribed that, “in auditing, the collection (of revenues) should be carefully examined, investigated, and scrutinized; as for the balance for the previous year, it should be seen whether it was correctly recorded by the person responsible according to the previous book and account,” and, further, that “all titles of delivery {levereringsposter) must be carefully examined (to see) whether they have been checked off according to the state {Kungl. Maj:ts) budget and disposition and assignations based thereon, and (whether they are) covered by correct receipts and documents.” If any questions about the accounts arose during this procedure, the college wrote up its “observations” about them and sent them to the official responsible for the accounts. The matter was dismissed if a satisfactory explanation was received within the time allotted, but if the explanation was unsatisfactory the responsible official was summoned to a special treasury court, which adjudicated the case after a “legal trial.” The jurisdiction of the kammarrevisionen could include aspects of criminal law, such as in the case of extortion of crown funds, but the majority of cases were so-called cases of reprimand, such as the one described above. In the Russian prikaz administration there were also organs charged with auditing functions. There is mention in the middle of the seventeenth century of a special accounts prikaz, the Schetnyi prikaz, which: administers and takes care of the whole Muscovite state’s revenues and expenditures and surpluses acording to the books for many years. And surplus funds usually come in to it as income, which (funds) during some years have not been taken from someone for the tsar’s treasury, just as with that which for some years has remained as a surplus after an expenditure. Aside from its role as an auditor of accounts, therefore, this prikaz also functioned as a repository for the surpluses from the collection of taxes remaining from earlier years, as well as for possible surpluses occurring in the administration of funds by the other prikazy. On the local level, the accounts were first subjected to control by the voevoda, who compared the tax collection lists for the current year with 30:{ 304 Instruktioner II, 191. Ibid., 192. WiLLGREN, 498—499. Concerning the judiciary power of the kammarrevisionen, see also Linde, 29—30. G. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsarstovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha (St. Petersburg, 1906), 117. :i(M) 302 This prikaz was also referred to for a time as the Prikaz stolovykh i sebetnykh del, since it was given the task of overseeing the accounts for the maintenance of the “tsar’s table" {tsarskii stol); Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', XXV, 193. 304
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