V. The Administration of Commerce and Mining The measures taken by the Petrine regime in the field of economic policy during the first decade of the eighteenth century led to considerable hardships for those engaged in commerce and industry. The liberties previously enjoyed by merchants and manufacturists were replaced by detailed state regulation, and monopoly rights granted by the state obstructed the development of an expansive capital and commodity market. The burden of taxes on Russian businessmen increased so much during this period that no capital could be accumulated for future investments. For many, these changes resulted in economic ruin, and N. I. Pavlenko described the gravity of the situation in the following manner: * the merchant class experienced such an obvious shock, that its leaders, having flourished in the seventeenth century, could not go on, and the majority of its representatives sank into the rank and file of the urban population. Changes in Russian economic policy in connection with Peter’s collegial reforms, however, once again altered the economic situation for commercial and manufacturing groups. The government had admitted the irrationality of the previous economic and tax policies, which, in the long run, would have led to a reduction of potential tax revenues, and instead it introduced a series of incentives and privileges to encourage new initiatives in the fields of trade and manufacturing. An important aspect of this process was the creation of the kommerts-kollegiia and the berg- i manufaktiir-kollegiia, the instructions for which presaged an economic policy influenced by cameralism.- In his “Berättelse om Ryssland,” the Swedish minister at St. Petersburg, Herman Cedercreutz, wrote that the two new Russian colleges had been * N. I. Pavlenko, "Torgovo-promyshlennaia politika pravitel’stva Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII veka,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 3 (1978), 65. - See above, p. 114.
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