VII. The Administration of the Armed Forces Thus far this study has dealt solely with the civilian aspects of Peter the Great’s administrative reforms, concentrating in particular on the reorganization of the fiscal administration. The collegial reform, however, also involved important changes in the administration of the armed forces, which was systematically divided according to service branch between a college of war, the krigs-kollegiia, and an admiralty college, the admiralteiskaia kollegiia. The krigs-kollegiia was to be responsible for “the army and the garrisons and all military affairs which have been under the Voennyi prikaz and which are found throughout the realm,” while the admiralteiskaia kollegiia was to be in charge of “the fleet and all naval personnel, as well as naval affairs and the administration pertaining to them.” * This reform was to give the Russian military a unitary administration based on the same administrative norm as were the civilian colleges, that is to say, on the General Regulation. When it comes to the genesis of the two military colleges, the source materials available for this study have been extremely limited, since there has been no opportunity to study most of the relevant documents in the military collections of the central Soviet historical archives or any of those in the other Soviet military and naval archives. But to refrain entirely from treating these two very large and important parts of the central administrative organization would do violence to the whole which Peter’s collegial reform constituted. For this reason, the genesis of the krigs-kollegiia and the admiralteiskaia kollegiia will be traced as far as the sources available for this study will allow so that we may see whether it is possible to find any connection between these colleges and the comparable Swedish colleges. Up until the end of the seventeenth century, the Russian military administration reflected the motley structure of the Muscovite military » PS2, V, no. 3,255, p. 601.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=