242 potentate {vlastiteV), but rather like a president,” but this administrative system did not last very long, either. Just two years after the creation of the post of provincial councillor, new and radical changes in the administrative organization were once again announced. An ukaz dated January 28, 1715 decreed that:**® in those gubernii (and) in those towns, in which there are no garrisons, there shall no longer be any ober-komendanty and komendanty, but in their place there shall be provincial councillors, one in charge of each dolia, in which there is to be maintained, according to the arrangement, a number of farms amounting to 5,536 homesteads, or as many as may be more suitable. As is evident from this ukaz, the ober-komendanty and komendanty were transformed into officials with purely military functions. A new administrative unit, the dolia, was introduced in the gnbernii; it was to be governed by a provincial councillor and was to include an average of 5,536 peasant homesteads subject to taxation. These changes brought on the demise of the old uezd as an administrative unit. The dolia sometimes coincided territorially with the uezd, but it was more often the case that the new administrative unit departed to a greater or lesser extent from that previous geographical entity. With the uezd, too, the last remnants of the old voevoda administration also disappeared.^** The provinces, however, were not abolished. Instead, they remained as an intermediate unit of administration between the guberniia and the dolia, sometimes under the administration of a provincial councillor.***** The collegial form of government was not dismantled, even though the provincial councillors were dispersed throughout the guberniia in order to administer their separate parts of that larger unit. The governor was to have two provincial councillors at his side at all times as joint administrators, and these positions were to circulate among the provincial councillors of the guberniia at monthly or bi-monthly intervals. In addition, it was decreed that “the provincial councillors will meet with the governor at the end of the year with all of their administrative accounts and everything that is necessary for the correction of their dealings, reveal that this system of rotation among the provincial councillors was actually practiced, but we know nothing about the extent to which the annual meetings between the governors and the provincial councillors took The sources 101 ZA (no. 248), 206. ZA (no. 367), 365. Slitsan, 324—325. However, the uezd continued to exist to a certain extent as a unit of tax administration. Bogoslovskii indicated cases where the accounts were set up with the uezd as the basis; see Bogoslovskii (1903), 99. Slitsan, 325. ZA (no. 367), 365. 99 100 lUl
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