234 considerable economic losses because of the arbitrary methods of tax collection employed by the voevodas. An interesting example of this is provided by the petition presented to Tsar Peter in November 1698 by the very rich merchant Grigorii Stroganov and a number of other merchants. It complained that many voevodas were setting up barriers along the roads and rivers where, without any legal right to do so, they imposed high fees on the goods passing by.^^ In the southern parts of Russia, where the influence of commercial capitalism was weak, the misuse of power by the voevodas became a chronic problem. The so-called Burmistrskaia palata, or Ratusha, established in 1699 deprived the voevodas of their authority over the various groups of buslnessmen. The voevodas were deprived of both their judicial functions and their tax collecting duties when it came to the taxes imposed upon the urban populations in the towns affected by this reform. Instead, the businessmen in these towns were to fall under the jurisdiction of the burgomasters, or burmistry, they themselves elected. In keeping with the aims of the reform, the local burgomasters were not subordinate to the prikazy, but were Instead directly responsible to the Ratusha in Moscow.^^ In towns where the merchants were economically more powerful, especially in the northern parts of the country, voevodas were no longer to be appointed.'’*’ In summary, this reform was carried out in the northern towns, while the old order remained in force in the south, which was primarily populated by the service nobility and its serfs. As before, the voevodas conA. G. Man’kov, "Gosudarstvenno-pravovoc obespechcnie torgovykh putei,” in V. T. Pashuto et al., eds., Obshchestvo i gosudarstvo feodal'noi Rossii. Sbornik statei v chest' 70-lctiia akad. L. V. Cherepnina (Moscow, 1975), 315—316. Sec, too, S. V. Bakhrushin, “Ochcrki po istorii krasnoiarskogo uezda v XVII vcke,” Nauchnye trudy (4 v., Moscow, 1952—1959), IV, 170—178, which depicts in detail the deep antagonisms that divided the voevoda administration, on the one hand, from the merchants and service nobility, on the other, in the Krasnoiarsk district at the end of the seventeenth century; and A. A. Kizevetter, “Zagraditel’nye otriady XVII veka," Sbornik statei po riisskoi istorii, posviashchennykh S. F. Platonova (Petrograd, 1922), 322, which states that “the transport of goods on the Oka was subjected to severe obstacles because of the shameless and willful activities of the voevodas. The entire Oka was studded with customs barriers set up by the voevodas.” BOGOIAVLENSKII & VeSELOVSKII, 391. M. M. Bogoslovskii, Petr I. Materialy dlia biografii (5 v., Leningrad, 1940—1948), III, 296. Ibid., IV, 276. As Bogoslovskii has pointed out, however, voevodas continued, to a certain extent, to be sent out to the northern coastal towns {pomorskie goroda), even if they were given limited authority. In 1700, Prince M. I. Lykov was named voevoda in Arkhangel’sk, and he was relieved at that post the following year by Prince A. P. Prozorovskii.
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