386 documents sent to foreign powers, while a special seal, the so-called kormlenaia pechat\ was used for documents sent to the Crimea and for different types of letters of donation.-’’ Great changes in the status and activities of the Posol’skii prikaz took place during the first years of the eighteenth century. As a result of Tsar Peter’s frequent moving about during the early years of the Great Northern War, a field chancellery, the PosoPskaia pokhodnaia kantseliariia, was set up and given charge of the most important political and diplomatic correspondence. The field chancellery was considered the tsar’s personal chancellery, and in its creation one can see the increasingly autocratic tsar’s attempts to gain control over the administrative apparatus. In principle, the chancellery was only meant to deal with diplomatic affairs, thus the adjective PosoPskaia, but in reality it dealt with all important decisions concerning the internal affairs of the realm.-** In the end, the field chancellery, under the title PosoPskaia kantseliariia, was given the status of a permanent institution, and in 1710 it was set up as such at St. Petersburg. During the period 1710 to 1718, the chancellery developed into a central administrative organ for Russia’s relations with other countries, while the secondary rank of the Moscow prikaz was underlined.-' Domestic affairs were placed under the direction of the Senate and, in April 1716, Peter issued an ukaz changing the name of the chancellery to the PosoPskaia kollegiia and prescribing a collegial order for its operation.^® In the end, the PosoPskaia kollegiia was reorganized in 1720 as the kollegiia inostrannykh del, with the Swedish kanslikollegium serving as its model. For guidance in the organization of the kollegiia inostrannykh del, Heinrich Pick submitted in April 1718 a report entitled ‘'A brief description of the royal Swedish chancellery college {kollegiia kantseliariia) in Stockholm.” Pick divided his report into three sections: “Concerning the Swedish chancellery college before 1714,” “Concerning the chancellery college after 1714,” and “Concerning the Swedish form of government after the introduction of absolutism,” which contained a brief account of the college’s responsibilities and organization under Charles XI and Charles XII. The third section contained many interesting observations Pick had made concerning Caroline absolutism and the administrative and organizational changes which took place during that period; it will be dealt with later on in another context,-^ -5 Ibid., 48. -• S. A. Belokurov et al., Ocherk istorii ministerstva inostrannykh del, 1802—1902 (St. Petersburg, 1902), 35. Ibid., 36. ZA (no. 405), 518. -* Pick’s memorandum is published in ZA (no. 414), 542—549. I have also had the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=