81 initiative during his years of service to the Russian tsar. Cederberg summarized his observations by saying that “wir sind der Uberzeugung, dass ohne alien Zweifel, Heinrich Pick bei der Durchfiihrung der Reformen Peters des Grossen eine hervorragende Rolle gespielt und auch nachher eine beachtenswerte Tätigkeit entfaltet hat. substantiate Cederberg’s opinion concerning Pick’s importance for the Russian administrative reforms. Pick’s activities in connection with the introduction of collegial administration to Russia have been illuminated further by modern Soviet historiography. la. E. Vodarskii showed that Pick drew up a first draft of the regulation for the magistracy in St. Petersburg that was promulgated in 1721,'"^ and, in his source critical investigation of the Table of Ranks of 1722, S. M. Troitskii demonstrated that Pick supplied the Russian legislators with information about the Swedish system of ranks.In spite of the fact that knowledge of Pick’s importance has thus been supported by a fairly large body of factual material, some Soviet historians deny the fact that Pick played a central role in the Russian reform activities. G. A. Nekrasov, for example, has written that “one must not, however, exaggerate H. Pick’s role in carrying out the reform of the central administration; he was merely an agent and executor of the will and directives of Peter I and his collaborators.” It is possible to agree fully with Nekrasov that Pick was an instrument, although a necessary one, for the realization of the reform plans of the tsar and his closest advisers. However, this conclusion does not mean that we must deny that Pick took any personal initiatives. On the contrary, the Russian sources portray Pick as a man of strong will and strong opinions concerning the tasks with which he was charged by the tsar and the senate, and there are instances where the direction of the reforms was determined on the basis of Pick’s advice. Pinally, we must mention another person who was engaged by the tsar to participate in the development of the colleges, namely Baron Ananias Christian Pott von Luberas, who had once been in Swedish service, and who was familiar with the organization and tasks of the Swedish administration. Peter met with Luberas at Aachen at the end of June 1717, and Luberas entered the tsar’s employ as an “actual privy councillor” {deistviteVnyi tainyi sovetnik) at Spaa on July 1, 1717. He was immediately instructed to travel about Germany to recruit personnel for the The present study will ” 171 Cederberg, 4. See p. 266. >■3 Troitskii (1974), 49, 69—70, 98—99. '''' Nekrasov, 340. 6 - Peterson
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