13 influence of foreign institutions and the teachings of Leibniz, developed his theory of the centralized mechanism. Gradovskii discussed the question of Swedish influence on Peter’s administrative reforms and claimed that the Russian central administration was reorganized on the model of the Swedish collegial system. That the choice fell on Sweden was, according to Gradovskii, due to the fact that, among other things, Sweden obviously had its consummate administration to thank for its great military successes.'^" Thus, Peter’s decision to introduce the Swedish collegial model was based on practical considerations; if Sweden’s strong position was explained by a well-organized administration, it was entirely consistent that, “if Russia possessed such institutions, then she too would stand in the ranks of the European states.” Gradovskii’s Western sympathies are very apparent from statements such as this. One thing that distinguished historians Influenced by the theories of the state school was their pronounced idealization of the various functions of the government. The state and its organs were neutral institutions acting on the basis of legislation that was both systematic and minutely detailed. The fact that historians of this school were especially interested in Peter the Great is explained by the belief that his reign constituted the beginning of a new period in Russian history. This new period was, in their minds, characterized above all by a detailed legal regulation of the direction and administration of the state, which regulation guaranteed a new “legality” {zakonnost’) in the place of the old Muscovite arbltrariness. In terms of methodology, the legal historians restricted themselves to a detailed description of the outwardly visible legal forms. They were particularly interested in the structure and functions of the various administrative organs, as well as in their areas of competence in relation to other state organs. One important task for these researchers, of course, was to consider the historical origins of the administrative system. The primary source materials for these studies was the great collection of Russian legislative acts, the Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, which was published in 1830.^** The classic nineteenth-century work on the administrative reforms of Peter the Great is Pavel Miliukov’s book on the Russian state economy and Peter’s reforms during the first quarter of the eighteenth century.'*® "■ Ibid., 86. Ibid., 87. Published in 46 volumes and referred to here as PSZ. Pavel Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo Rossii v pervoi chetverti 18-go stoletiia i reforma Petra Velikogo (St. Petersburg, 1892). References here are to the second edition (St. Petersburg, 1905).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=