244 their business and the collection of taxes they shall have provincial burgomasters [zemskie burmistry), whom they themselves elect with the knowledge of the governor (s vedoma gnbernatorskogo). Since the tax revenues from the towns were, after the guberniia reform, to be sent to the guberniia bursaries rather than to the Ratusha in Moscow, the influence of the governors over the fiscal administration of the towns became quite extensive. Nor was it unusual for provincial councillors to interfere in the activities of the merchants and other tradesmen.But urban self-government was not destroyed entirely; indeed, as we shall see further on, the collegial and provincial reforms were to strengthen it. As we have seen above, one persistent aspect of the local administrative reforms introduced in Russia during the first fifteen years of the eighteenth century was the attempt to strengthen the local administrative authority. The measures that were taken aimed not only at improving the collection of taxes, but also at providing more effective control of the enserfed peasant population. Thus, one important task for the local administration was to suppress manifestations of discontent and open unrest among the serfs and to maintain the social order in the provinces. The system of administration by provincial councillors was in operation until 1719, when it was replaced by the so-called provincial administration, which provided a systematic continuation of the trends outlined above. This new administrative system, which was modeled on the Swedish local administrative structure, was characterized by a systematic division of labor and of responsibilities. Among other things, administrative and judicial functions were carefully separated, and a strictly regulated division of labor was introduced. The local administrative organs were arranged into a hierarchical system, at the pinnacle of which were the Senate and the state colleges, where the decision-making power of the administration was centered. In his study of the Russian state finances during the reign of Peter the Great, cited so many times above, Pavel Miliukov demonstrated that the Russian provincial administration of 1719 was very dependent on the Swedish system of local administration.”- Particularly with the help of the memoranda about the Swedish local administration written by Heinrich Pick, Miliukov was able to show that the Russian reformwas planned and executed in close adherence to the Swedish model.^^^ It was his conelusion that, with the exception of the parish administration (kirkhshpib), ” 110 ZA (no. 367), 365. Bogoslovskii (1903), 117. Miliukov, 456—471. Ibid., 457, 460.
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