68 economy. But that which is not in print he was to obtain in manuscript, and that which is not available in manuscript because it has evolved through custom, that he should also describe. But as of yet we have not received any answer to this. Explain to him, therefore, that he is to strive to acquire this, as indicated above, namely all colleges and service ranks and each college’s task and each official in that college; he is also to collect materials concerning the responsibilities and ranks of the provincial officials and other officials and everything that has to do with that, for we hear that even the Swedes took from them. It is clear fromthe closing words of this ukaz that the immediate reason for the Russians suddenly devoting, at the beginning of the autumn of 1715, all of their attention to the Danish administrative system was that Peter had been led to believe that the Swedish colleges were based on Danish models. In view of this, of course, it was quite logical to abandon the Swedish project, and, in view of the state of war between Russia and Sweden, it was also clear that it would be easier to study the Danish administrative apparatus in its everyday routines and to collect the Danish legislative materials necessary for the proposed reform in Russia. In November 1715, laguzhinskii’s assignment was broadened to include searching for suitable persons in Denmark for service in the Russian colleges, since “without them”, as Peter himself pointed out, “it will be impossible to carry it out only on the basis of books, for they never write down all the circumstances.” The tsar, however, had been misinformed about the originality of the Danish collegial organization; the fact was that the Danish administrative colleges had been set up on the pattern of their Swedish counterparts, and not the other way around. The collegial system had been adopted in Denmark in 1660, in connection with the introduction of absolutism under Frederik III.'-^ It is interesting to note that it was Frederik’s German officials, in particular, who perceived of Sweden as a pioneer when it came to administrative organization.^^® This clearly emerges, as Svend Ellehoj has shown us, in the instructions for the Danish colleges drawn up by Frederik Ill’s German advisers: ZA (no. 27), 26. The materials eventually sent to St. Petersburg by the Russian ambassador at Copenhagen, Prince Vaslii Lukich Dolgoukii, included Christian V’s code of laws and the Danish military statutes; see ZA (no. 39), 53. See Ditlev Tamm & Jens Ulf Jorgensen, Dansk Retshistorie i Hovedpunkter fra Landskabslovene til 0rsted (2 v., Copenhagen, 1973—1975), II, 21—31. Knud Fabricius, “Kollegiestyrets Gennembrud og Sejr 1660—1680,” in Aage Sachs, ed.. Den danske Centraladministration (Copenhagen, 1921), 201. Svend Ellehoj, “Rettens grundlaeggelse,” in Povl Bagge et al., Hojestret 1661— 1961 (2 V., Copenhagen, 1961), I, 22. See, too, Poul J. Jorgensen, Dansk Rets Historic (6th ed., Copenhagen, 1974), 555, and J. Boisen Schmidt, Studier over Statshusholdningen i Kong Frederik IV’s Regeringstid 1699—1730 (Aarhus, 1967), 21—24.
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