230 fore coveted by many men, but they were usually distributed as a form of reward for military merit.^- In the larger and economically more important cities, the position of voevoda was often held by a member of the high nobility. During the second half of the seventeenth century, for example, one finds the likes of a Prince Repnin serving first as voevoda in Smolensk and then as voevoda in Novgorod. Prince I. S. Prozorovskii served as voevoda in Astrakhan’ in the 1670s, while Prince G. G. Romodanovskii served as voevoda in Belgorod during the same period.^® The members of the Duma coveted the lucrative voevodaships, and, according to a list from 1668, thirteen of its sixty-eight members, including four boiare, were serving simultaneously as voevodas that year.^'* The system of local administration that developed during the first half of the seventeenth century retained its form and its administrative practices right up until the beginning of the next century. Captain John Perry published a revealing description of the activities of the voevodas in 1716, when he wrote, for example, that:^-’ each of which Governors in their respective Stations had a Diack (d’iak, author’s note), or Petty-Chancellor and an Office or Court of Justice erected under them in each City, called a Precause, (or Place for Command, as the Word signifies) where they sate both as Commissaries, to transact Business relating to the Czar’s Revenue; and as Judges, with an absolute Power to determine all Causes, without any Jury affix’d, or Council to plead for unfortunate Men. Only in Cases of Life and Death they were obliged to make Representation by Letter to the Lord of the Province®^ in Mosco before any man was executed; and which they never failed so to represent, as to make the Punishment fall as they would have it. These Governors had their Commissions granted them, and usually held their Places at most but for three years, if they did not practise such open Roguery and Oppression as to be turn’d out sooner. They never had any Salary appointed them; but on the contrary it was the Custom to give the Lord of the Province"** =>- Ibid., 213. M. N. PoKROVSKii, “Russkaia istoriia s drcvneishikh vremcn", in N. M. Tikhomirov et al., eds., Izbrannye proizvedeniia (4 v., Moscow, 1965—1967), I, 572; S. K. Bogoiavlenskii & S. B. Veselovskii, “Mestnoe upravlenie,” Ocherki (1955), 385; B. G. Slitsan, “Reformy mestnogo upravleniia,” Ocherki (1954), 318. See also A. Barsukov, Spiski gorodovykh voevod i drugikh lits voevodskogo upravleniia Moskovskogo gosudarstva XVII stoletiia (St. Petersburg, 1902). V. O. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia duma drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1882), 414. John Perry, The State of Russia Under the Present Czar (London, 1716), 188—189. What Perry referred to here was the so-called prikaznaia izba, or voevoda chancellery; for its organizational structure, see B. Chicherin, Oblastnye uchrezhdeniia Rossii V XVII-mveke (reprint, Mouton 1968; original, Moscow, 1856), 99. I.e., to the judge (sud’ia) in the prikaz to which the voevoda was, in theory, responsible. ** See note 37. 36 36
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