32 be studied as an isolated problem with purely legal and technical dimensions, that is, as an abstract striving to achieve more rational forms of organization and administrative routines; this could produce the misconception that Russian administrative reforms were primarily the result of intellectual influences from the West. Instead, a basic assumption for a study of this type must be that the administrative reforms themselves were a result of socio-economic and political developments in Russia. Thus, a major thesis of this study is that the development of the Russian administration was intimately connected with the creation of a regular military establishment and all theconsequences such a development had for economic, social, and political conditions in the Russian state. That the Russian administrative reforms were carried out on the basis of foreign, and, according to the hypothesis of this study, primarily Swedish, models is primarily a question of politics and ideology, and it will, to a large extent, be handled as such. The two aspects cannot, of course, be separated from one another as two completely independent levels in the set of problems dealt with here, but in order to avoid mistakes of the type mentioned above, it is necessary to keep this dimension in mind. The present study opens with a chapter on the general preconditions for administrative reform in Russia, including a brief description of the seventeenth-century Russian administration, the preparation for the collegial reform, the recruiting of personnel, and so on. Thereafter, the presentation has been arranged according to the systematic division of responsibilities upon which the Russian collegial systems was based. Chapter 2, therefore, deals with the central fiscal administration (the kamer-kollegiia, shtatskontor-kollegiia, and the revizion-kollegiia), while chapter 3 deals with the local fiscal administrative organs. Chapter 4 is devoted to the judicial system and to legislation concerning procedural law, and the importance of the collegial reform for the administration of commerce and manufactories {kommerts-kollegiia and berg- i 7JtanufaktHr-kollegiia) is investigated in chapter 5. The administration of foreign affairs is dealt with in chapter 6, while the reform of the military administration (the krigs-kollegiia and the admiralteiskaia kollcgiia) is discussed in chapter 7. Because of the extensive nature of the subject, it has been found necessary to impose certain limitations. For example, the changes in the central administration implemented in 1722 (the restructuring of the Senate and the establishment of the Procuracy General) have not been dealt with.
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