24 the latter part of Peter’s regime were seen by these writers as a logical development of the increasing tendencies toward centralization of the state administration that had marked the latter half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. This process was a step in the final consolidation of absolute monarchy in Russia, the economic and social base for which Sofronenko and Steshenko explain against the background of the Russian nobility’s development into a monolithic social class, since “the absolutist state best answered the interests of the ruling class, reinforced its position in the class struggle, and consolidated and expanded the rights of the feudal lords both in the area of the ownership of land and in that of the governance of the state. One of the preconditions for the Russian collegial reforms, according to Sofronenko and Steshenko, was the existence of collegial elements in the existing administrative system.®® The transition to the new system was implemented gradually, and the establishment of the colleges only represents the final phase in the development of the prikaz system. The transformation of the prikazy into collegial administrative organs was carried out in such a manner that some of the prikazy were directly replaced by colleges, while others were merged to form colleges. The majority of the colleges were set up with the old administration as a model and with the personnel and the archives of the prikazy, while the principal functions of the prikazy were transferred to the newly formed colleges.^®® Thus, there was continuous development from the prikaz administration to the collegial system. The concept of continuity we meet here is familiar to us fromthe essays of E. Berendts. Steshenko and Sofronenko dealt only briefly with how the collegial reformwas prepared and executed. They noted the much discussed Swedish influence on the reforms in a footnote, but then went on to deny it, referring to Berendts as a source. The new service hierarchy created by the introduction of the collegial administration was granted legal recognition in the so-called Table of Ranks {Tabel o rangakh) of 1722, which coordinated the military and civil service ranks in a strictly hierarchical system. The Table of Ranks was the subject of a thorough study by Sergei M. Troitskii in his doctoral dissertation on the formation of the Russian bureaucracy during the eighteenth century.^®^ Basing his work on a very large number of archival 98 101 »8 Ihid., 30. Ibid., 73. ><"> Ibid., 75. *8^ Ibid., 73 note 1. S. M. Troitskii, Russkii absoliutizm i dvorianstvo XVIII v. Formirovanie biurokratii (Moscow, 1974). 102
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