235 tinued to be appointed by the prikazy in Moscow.’’" Nor did the voevodas cease to exploit their positions of authority in order to enhance their own pocketbooks. An endless stream of reports reached Moscow with complaints of how the voevodas presented serious obstacles to trade, since “they take bribes from [the merchants] and beat them, and also cause interruptions in the collection of state taxes and (in the conduct) of provincial affairs {zemskie dela). Even the powerful manufacturer Nikita Demidov had problems with the local administration and abandoned a foundry in the Urals (Nev’ianska zavod) in 1703 because the local voevoda was interfering with its operations. On the basis of Demidov’s complaints, an ukaz was issued in 1704 forbidding the voevoda from interfering in Demidov’s affairs, and Demidov was subsequently able to operate without any interference from the local administrative organs.’^** After the turn of the eighteenth century, a number of changes were introduced in the local administrative system. These changes were partly a result of, and partly a prerequisite for, the political development of Russian society toward an absolutist form of government. We have already mentioned the reform of 1699, which established the Ratusha and its local organs and brought economic and administrative self-government for the merchants, and especially for those in the northern commercial towns. The reforms which followed upon this one during the first two decades of the eighteenth century are characterized by an attempt to limit the power of the prikazy and the voevodas and to increase the influence of the service nobility over the local administration. A reform introduced in 1702 called for the local corporations of noblemen to appoint, according to the importance of the provincial town, from two to four representatives {voevodskie tovarishchi), who were to be answerable, together with the voevoda, for the administration of the uezd.^^ The voevoda was no longer to be allowed to make any decisions by himself; fromnow on all matters were to be decided through a collegial decision-making process.®* According to Vasilii Nikitich Tatishchev, in his Istoriia Rossiiskaia, an attempt to give the service nobility considerable influence in the local administration was made already during the reign of Tsar Feodor AlekseeIbid., 276, 280. The southern Russian towns were primarily administrative centers lacking any developed markets. S. M. Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, edited by L. V. Cherepnin (15 V., Moscow, 1959—1966), VIII, 70. B. B. Kafengauz, Istoriia khoziaistva Demidovykh v XVIII—XIX vv. (Moscow, 1949), 154—155. V. O. Kliuchevskii, Istoriia soslovii v Rossii (3rd ed., Petrograd, 1918), 225. Slitsan, 319. ” .58 60
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