RB 29

40 lery. The largest staff of all the prikazy was that of the Pomestnyi prikaz, which employed 446 pod^iachie in 1686—87.^3 The pod'iachie came fromvarious social backgrounds. During the second half of the seventeenth century it became more and more common for the sons of pod’iachie to inherit their fathers’ positions, and thus the majority of these jobs eventually came to be held by sons of former clerks. The sons of the clergy, who had learned to read and write at an early age, constituted another important group among the lower personnel of the prikazy. Both the nobility and the commercial and manufacturing groups were represented among this category of staff, as well. During the second half of the seventeenth century, however, measures were taken to limit the entry of the sons of the merchant class into the prikazy, since the government was striving to maintain the ability of the urban population to pay taxes. Only the sons of prikaz servants and the clergy were to be allowed to obtain positions as pod'iachie.^* While a few clerks in this category did advance to the rank of d’iak, an overwhelming majority of those who did were men of noble birth.-^ Prikazy usually consisted of a number of divisions called “desks,” or stoly, which were organized according to either geographical or functional categories. In turn, these “desks” were divided into subdivisions called povyPia. In the Razriadnyi prikaz, for example, there were eight “desks,” five of which were defined in geographical terms—the Moskovskii, Vladimirskii, Novgorodskii, Sevskii, and Belgorodskii stoly—and three of which had different functions—the pomestnyi, denezhnyi, and prikaznyi stoly. The Moskovskii stol administered the prikaz personnel and was responsible for the fortresses and for guarding the frontiers of the realm, while the other geographically defined “desks” maintained registers of the military personnel within the respective military areas irazriad). Among the “desks” designated by function, the pomestnyi stol determined how much land each noble serviceman in the military and in the civil administration was to receive for his support. Contact with the other chancelleries was the task of the prikaznyi stol, which also had judiciary powers over the members of the prikaz administration and over military personnel. The denezhnyi stol, finally, was responsible for the incomes -* N. F. Demidova, “Biurokratizatsiia gosudarstvcnnogo apparata absoliutizma v XVII—XVIII vv.,” in N. M. Druzhinin et al., eds., Absoliutizm v Rossii (XVII— XVIII V.). Sbornik state! k 70-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia i 40-letiiu nauchnoi i pcdagogicheskoi deiatel’nosti B. B. Kafengauza (Moscow, 1964), 216. A. V. Chernov, “K istorii pomestnogo prikaza,” Trudy moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo istoriko-arkhivnogo instituta, 9 (1957), 235. 2'' Ibid., 232.

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