297 the appropriation of the peasant's surplus.-*'® Another characteristic of Swedish and Russian economic development was the growing number of manufactories. If one looks more carefully at the economic and social realities, however, great differences emerge, and indeed must emerge, between Sweden and Russia because of their different traditions of historical development. It is these differences that provide the explanation for the minimal success of the Russian administrative system that had been organized on the basis of Swedish models. The Soviet Latvian historian la. Zutis has pointed out quite correctly that: without the personal participation of a free peasantry, the activities in a number of the links in the Swedish administrative apparatus was unthinkable, and it was not just a coincidence that the lowest administrative unit, the parish, was entirely eliminated from the Russian local administration introduced in 1719, in spite of the fact that the hierarchical structure of the Swedish local organs was based on just that unit; but in Russia it was, according to an authoritative Senate declaration, impossible to elect jury members to the parish court, for “there are no clever persons among the peasants in the districts.” From this general observation it is possible to go a step further. It has been shown earlier that, in the beginning, the Russian collegial reform was prepared without anyone asking whether the existing forms of local administration could be adapted to the new central administrative organs, or whether it would be necessary to introduce changes on the local level, as well. It was only after Pick had pointed out that “all colleges deal with the gubernii and therefore it is necessary, subject to Your Majesty’s judgement, to establish the guberniia governments in a certain order,” that Peter, as we have seen, promulgated an ukaz to the effect that the local administration, as well as the central administrative organs, would be reformed on the basis of Swedish models.-"® The Swedish local administration, however, presupposed not only the cooperation of a free peasantry, as Zutis observed, but also the specific cameral and fiscal conditions from which the administrative organization had developed over time. What this means in concrete terms demands a somewhat more detailed explanation. In Sweden, the taxation of the peasants was tied to the possession or leaseholding of land. The actual assessment of taxes on crown homesteads and freeholds was preceded by a careful survey, which required that surveyors be sent out to the parishes in order to survey and assess each home297 Lars Herlitz, Jordegendom och ränta. Omfördelningen av jordbrukets merprodukt i Skaraborgs län under frihetstiden (Lund, 1974), 161; Tikhonov (1974), 300—305. Ia. Ia. Zutis, Ostzeiskii vopros v XVIII veke (Riga, 1946), 89. Scc above, p. 247. 297 208
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