74 to Sweden via Denmark. They arrived at Stockholm sometime during the early weeks of 1716, but we know very little about how Pick spent his days in the Swedish capital. We do know, however, that he was not entirely without contacts; we know, for instance, that he maintained friendly contacts with State Secretary Daniel Niklas von Höpken, who had previously been in Holstein service.Pick was therefore able to move in a social context which protected him against possible suspicions and thus facilitated his work. Pick made very good use of his time in Stockholm, and upon returning to St. Petersburg he had with him hundreds of Swedish statutes, instructions, and the like, partly in printed versions and partly in longhand copies. Among other things. Pick brought with him Kongl. stadgar, förordningar, href och resolutioner ifrån åhr 1528 intil 1701 angående justitiae- och executionsährender, which had been published by Johan Schmedeman in 1706 and which contained over 800 Swedish legislative No suspicions of the real nature of Pick’s activities appear to have been raised, since the Swedes allowed him to see and even copy a whole series of important documents. In the archives of the Russian Senate, for example, one finds original drafts of the Swedish national budget for 1715 (both in Swedish and in German) which Pick somehow succeeded in obtaining in Stockholm.Pick appears to have been well trusted in the colleges he visited, but he was aware of the dangers he would face in the event his real mission was revealed to the Swedish authorities. Later on, when Pick protested against the “eternal oath of service” (vechnaia prisiaga) the Senate had instructed him and the other foreigners in Russian service to subscribe to, he argued that he had spent “an entire year on a dangerous trip to Sweden” and that “that danger stemmed from the fact that I had to obtain several hundred regulations and various informations from the Swedish colleges and to invite from each and every college an official to enter His Tsarist Majesty’s service.” While this statement can be considered tendentious in view of the fact that Pick wished to stress his services to Peter and may have exaggerated the perils involved, it does, Cederberg, 14; Abel Helander, Daniel Niklas von Höpken 1669—1727 (Stockholm, 1927), 141—142. In his biography of Pick, Cederberg has included an inventory of the Swedish materials in Pick’s archive; Cederberg, Beilage 1, 1—64. Pick’s archive is preserved at the present time at the Central State Historical Archives of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (TsGIA ESSR) at Tartu as Pond 1429, Postanovleniia shvedskogo pravitel’stva i shtatnye raspisaniia shvedskikh kollegii; see Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Estonskoi SSR. Putevoditel’ (Moscow & Tartu, 1969), 268. There is also a register of Swedish legislative acts in TsGADA, f. 96 (1699) delo 5 1. 1—4v. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 58 11. 99—180. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 654 1. 76. 146 acts.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=