270 land. Among other things, he had been promised a description of the Swedish bergskollegium, a subject of great interest to him in view of his recent appointment as president of the berg- i manufaktur-kollegiia at St. Petersburg. The Senate promulgated an instruktsiia for “governors, voevodas, oberkomendanty, and komendanty'' on May 28, 1719, noting that it was to be followed “both in the gubernii and in the provinces.” As has been pointed out above, Pavel Miliukov claimed that the Russian instruktsiia for voevodas was patterned directly on the Swedish instruktion for landshövdingarIn addition, Miliukov argued that the instruktsiia constltuted an abbreviated translation of the Swedish instruktion,-^'^ but he did not draw any conclusions about the differences he observed in his comparison of the two documents. We shall now investigate how the Swedish instruktion was used in the preparation of the Russian text in order to determine whether we can say anything general about the method of compilation. Aside from the fact that the Russian document is much shorter than its Swedish counterpart, a number of articles in the instruktion were completely left out of the Russian text, just as some of the articles in the instruktsiia have no counterparts in its Swedish prototype. The Russian instruktsiia does, for the most part, follow the instruktion. The first three articles in both documents establish the provincial governor’s respective duties of allegiance and obedience in relation to the central government. Both Instructions open with an oath of allegiance to be sworn by the officer in question before he could assume his post. Through this oath of allegiance, the official was bound by a relationship of obedience to the person of the absolute monarch. With the help of an obedient and efficient local administration, the absolutist regime was to protect its fiscal interests and maintain the existing social order in the provinces. Indeed, the absolutist nature of the Swedish form of government was given very clear expression in the Swedish oath of office, which explains why it was borrowed almost verbatim by the Russians. The oath of office in the instruktsiia for voevodas was identical to that in the General Regulation, which served as the oath of office for all civil servants in Ibid., loc.cit. For Bruce’s appointment, see above, p. 89. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 654 1. 49; ZA (no. 71), 72; PSZ, V, no. 3,381, p. 710. In PSZ the instruktsiia has been dated January. See above, p. 245. Miliukov, 468. This presentation of the instructions for provincial governors in the two countries is based on the instruktsiia presented in PSZ, V, no. 3,294, p. 624—632 (the only one that has been available) and on the instruktion for landshövdingar of 1687 in RA, Smärre ämnesserier. Instruktioner för lantregeringen, vol. 2 (1661—1837). 212 216 21G
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