293 various officials and chancelleries and offices, will be saved and may be used for other necessary state expenditures. An ukaz was promulgated by the Supreme Privy Council on January 24, 1727, confirming the contents of the January manifesto. The Petrine local administrative system was completely dismantled,-®^’ and in its place the local administration was organized around a simple hierarchical principle. The new system consisted of three administrative levels—gubernii, provinces, and districts—and had a vertical hierarchical structure. The various administrative functions were to be charged to a single official on each level—the governor, the provincial voevoda, and the district voevoda, respectively—which facilitated more effective central direction. This reform was completed with the issuance of a new set of instructions for voevodas {nakaz voevodam) in September 1728. M. M. Bogoslovskii summarized the results of the Supreme Privy Council’s reform activities in the following manner: A local administration was reestablished which, to a great extent, meant a return to the system that had existed during Peter’s reign before the introduction of the Swedish institutions in 1719, and, in many ways, even to the system which had existed during the seventeenth century before the reforms. In form, certainly, the new local administration was reminiscent of the rule by voevodas of the seventeenth century, but there could be no return to the political conditions that had existed during that century. The political structure of Russia had gone through a complete transformation during Peter’s reign; gone was the Duma and the administration by prikazy and voevodas. From this great change there evolved an absolute monarchy which, above all, guaranteed the interests of the service nobility. Alongside of the regular army and navy, a civil administrative apparatus was built up and became an effective instrument of power in the service of the absolutist regime. Instead of the old aristocratic pattern of advancement based on birth, a new bureaucratic principle was introduced, which meant that merit and ability were decisive for gaining entrance to, and advancing in, the service of the state. Bogoslovskii revealed his insight into these matters when he wrote that “the highest offices among the ” 279 281 282 The manifest of January 9, 1727 quoted here has been published in Sbornik otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti imperatorskoi akademii nauk, (101 v., St. Petersburg, 1867—1928), IX, 84—108; see also B. L. Viazemskii, Verkhovnyi tainyi sovet (St. Petersburg, 1909), 285—298. PSZ, VII, no. 5,017, pp. 745—746. For the genesis of the nakaz voevodam of 1728, see lu. V. Got’e, Istoriia oblastnogo upravleniia v Rossii ot Petra I do Ekateriny II (2 v., Moscow, 1913—1941), I, 27, 48—68. Bogoslovskii (1902), 507. 27tt 280 282
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