22 Supporting Miliukov and Bogoslovskii, Baburin claimed that the reforms were brought about by a crisis in the state apparatus marked by the dissolution of the prikaz administration. The Senate was overwhelmed with work, since there were no intermediate links between itself and the local administration.®^ Careful consideration had gone into choosing the Swedish collegial system as the model for the Russian reforms, according to Baburin, with the decision being reached only after the administrative organizations of a number of other European countries had been studied, too.®® But, emphasized Baburin, “it was not a matter of a mechanical, slavish copying of the Swedish originals, but rather the employment of the Swedish regulations as the most satisfactory and closest model. An extensive study of Russian history published in the mid-1950s contains an entire volume devoted to the Petrine reform period.^” The section on the reform of the central administration, which was written by D. Baburin did not, however, contribute anything significantly new to our understanding of the Russian collegial reforms. As for the controversial question of foreign influence, Baburin limited himself to mentioning in passing that “the new ministers were warned that it was forbidden to borrow and copy the foreign models in a mechanical or slavish manner”.’’^ As a result of the collegial reforms, a legislative commission was set up in 1720 and charged with developing a legal code for the Russian empire on the basis of Danish and Swedish law, in particular. The commission had produced a complete draft of such a code by 1725, but it was never promulgated. The rich collection of source materials left behind by this commission was dealt with by A. G. Man’kov in an essay published in 1970.^^ He argued that the question of the importance of Western European legislation on the Petrine reforms remains unanswered. According to him, the reason for this failure is that most historians have discussed the question in general terms and limited themselves to describing the outwardly visible forms of the legal institutions. For this reason, according to Man’kov, “a satisfactory result would only be possible on the basis of a profound analysis of the essence of the legal norms one meets with necessary regard for the socio-economic conditions of each of the countries studied and on the basis of a careful textual analysis of the legislative ” 89 Ibid., loc.cit. Ibid., 51. Ibid., 54. B. B. Kafengauz & N. I. Pavlenko, eds., Ocherki istorii SSSR. Period feodalizma. Rossiia v pervoi chetverti XVIII v. Preobrazovaniia Petra I (Moscow, 1954). D. Baburin, “Reformy vysshykh i tsentral’nykh organov gosudarstvennogo upravleniia,” Ocherki (1954), 297.
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