212 those from previous years. While doing this, the voevoda compiled a “list of accounts” {schetnyi spisok) in which any surplus or deficit was listed, along with the reason for the discrepancy. When this local audit had been completed, the accounts were sent by “the first winter road” to the Schetnyi prikaz in Moscow, which executed the final audit. As was the case with the other prikazy, the Schetnyi prikaz also had judicial funcUnfortunately, there is no satisfactory study of how and to what extent the auditing of accounts was actually carried out by the Schetnyi prikaz. It is significant, however, that this prikaz was set up at a time when the Muscovite military organization was experiencing an Increase in the percentage of permanent units, the support of which placed greater demands on the administration of state finances. A. Koniaev, who has investigated the development of fiscal controls in prerevolutionary Russia, has pointed out that “the historical conditions under which the Schetnyi prikaz began its activities made auditing the payment of wages to the troops, and even other expenditures for the armed forces, especially ” 306 305 tions. necessary. In connection with the conclusion in 1701 at Birsen of a Russo-Polish treaty against Sweden, by which the Russians committed themselves to paying subsidies to the Poles, responsibility for overseeing the state finances was transferred to the confidential chancellery, or Blizhniaia kantseliariia, of the Duma, headed by General President Nikita Zotov.^®" All of the central administrative organs were to submit their accounts to this body for audit.^®® Beginning in 1701, the Blizhniaia kantseliariia received monthly and annual accounts from the prikazy.These auditing activities were, however, assumed upon its creation in 1711 by the Senate, which was to “oversee the expenditures throughout the realm, and eliminate those which are unnecessary, and then especially the meaningless ones [naprasnyi)." But the continuous auditing carried out by the Blizhniaia kantseliariia could not be continued by the Senate, since the guhernii, which had been set up in 1708, and which had taken over the fiscal administration from the prikazy, did not submit their accounts. At the end of December 1711, therefore, the Senate decided to “impose a penalty of 1,000 rubles for not submitting the revenues and expenditures books in the 305 Blekh, 58—59. A. Koniaev, Fmansovyi kontrol’ v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 1959), S06 9—10. Erik Amburger, Geschichte der Behördenorganisation Russlands von Peter dem Grossen bis 1917 (Leiden, 1966), 218; V. D. Koroliuk, “Svidanie v Birzhakh i pervye peregovory o pol’sko-russkomsoiuze,” Voprosy istorii, no. 4 (1948), 50—51. V. O. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia duma drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1882), 452. Miliukov, 304. ZA (no. 241), 199. 307 308 309
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