15 Miliukov’s view of the reform period was rather pessimistic. The reforms, in his view, were carried out without any plan and in a chaotic manner, and their lasting result was that “Russia was raised to the rank of a European state” at the expense of the total ruin of the empire.**" According to Miliukov, Russia did not possess the economic conditions required to maintain an administrative systemof the Swedish type.*** Miliukov stated that the collegial reform began with an almost slavish copying of the Swedish administration. It became apparent almost immediately, however, that the Swedish colleges could be introduced in Russia only after considerable modification, and for this reason the Russian colleges came to have few characteristic traits in common with the colleges upon which they were modeled.**’* Since Miliukov’s book dealt with economic history, the author limited his study to the colleges which administered the finances of the realm (the kamer-kollegiia, shtats-kontor-kollegiia, and revizion-kollegiia), and to the kommerts-kollegiia and the berg- i manufaktur-kollegiia. In addition to this, Miliukov tested methodically for Swedish influence on the reform of the local administration by comparing the Swedish instructions for provincial governors, bookkeepers, and bailiffs with their Russian counterparts from 1719. He found that the latter, with insignificant additions and changes, were “exact translations” of the Swedish instructions.’’** Miliukov’s results became standard fare in the Russian historical writing of the day. In his famous survey of Russian history, V. O. Kliuchevskii, who had been Miliukov’s teacher, wrote that the Petrine reforms involved the tsar’s putting “a Swedish administrative uniform on Russian spaces, and he even called the period one of “swedomania. Pavel Miliukov’s work on the Petrine reforms was followed by that of M. M. Bogoslovskii, who, in 1902, published a large study on the provincial administrative reforms that had been introduced along with the colleges.’’'* A persistent theme in Bogoslovskil’s book it that the new legal forms were an expression of attempts “to replace blind customand ignorant tyranny with rational and compulsory law. longer limited to merely organizing her resources in the struggle against Sweden; they now involved realizing an ideal—the regular state {reguliarIhid., 546. For this, sec also Pavel Miliukov, Ochcrki pu isloril Russkoi kiil’tiiry, (2nd ed., 3 V., St. Petersburg, 1896—1903), I: 4, 166—168. Miliukov (1905), 480. Ibid., 465. V. O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii, (4 v., Moscow, 1904—1910), IV, 240. Ibid., 259. ■’’* M. M. Bogoslovskii, Oblastnaia reforma Petra Velikogo (Moscow, 1902). Ibid., 44. ”51 ” 52 Russia’s aims were no ” 54
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