213 original, despite many ukazes, on the governors of Siberia and Arkhangel’sk, and on the steward in Moscow personally, since they have not been absent from their posts, but in the Kazan’, Azov, and Kiev gubernii the penalty shall be imposed on the landrikhter, who, in the absence of the governor, has himself had charge of the governing of the whole guberniia."The confusion in the auditing of the finances created by this situation served as the background for the formation of an accounts auditing chancellery, the Schetnaia kantseliariia, in the Senate in 1712 under the leadership of Prince M. Vadbol’skii. But Prince Vadbol’skii, too, failed to bring about any order in the accounts. In 1713, however, he did present a brief report concerning the fiscal administration of the gubernii in 1710.3«2 In the end, the auditing of accounts was returned to the Blizhniaia kautseliariia, which, through several measures including the reinstatement of the responsibility of each organ of fiscal administration to submit reports of its accounts on a regular basis, once again introduced continuous fiscal control.'”^ During its second stint as an auditing organ, however, the Blizhniaia kantseliariia was unable to restore the system of audits that had existed during the period 1701—1709, primarily because of the decentralization of the fiscal administration that grew out of the guberniia reform of 1708. For one thing, the new administrative centers were far from the capital, and, for another, the governors were unwilling to cooperate in facilitating any effective supervision of their own activities. Indeed, there were a number of cases of embezzlement among the governors; the governor of Siberia, Prince Matvei Gagarin, for example, stole a great deal of money and goods belonging to the crown and destroyed the accounts in order to make it impossible for anyone to audit the fiscal administration of his guberniia. When these facts were finally discovered, Gagarin was condemned to death and was executed in 1721.^'''’ The Blizhniaia kantseliariia was closed at the end of 1718, and its staff (pod'iachie) was put at the disposal of the iustits-kollegiia,^^^ while its duties were assumed by the newly formed revizion-kollegiia. The responsibilities of the revizion-kollegiia were defined on the basis of the activities of its Swedish prototype. The college was to serve as a central organ for the auditing of all the state accounts, as well as to function as N. F. Kalachov, ed., Doklady i prigovory sostoiavsbikhsia v praviteVstvninshchem Senate V tsarstvovanie Petra velikogo (6 v., St. Petersburg, 1880—1901), I, no. 569, pp. 405—406. Miliukov, 309. Ibid., loc.cit. Ibid., 311. V. M. Kuritsyn, “Pravo i sud,'’ Ocherki (1954), 404. Miliukov, 312. 314 ail 312 315 aiH
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=