83 personally take very much part in the organizational work, except in the case of the berg- i manufaktur-kollegiia, of which he became vice president in June 1719. One may add that Luberas was not mentioned further in connection with the establishment of the colleges. The fact that he was unable to win consideration of his suggestions is also understandable in light of the fact that they departed considerably from the Swedish collegial organization the Russians had decided to use as a model for their reforms. The Swedish colleges, which were studied and imitated in their practical workings, constituted an administration functioning in the real world, and this fact must have been of decisive importance for Peter’s decisions. The tsar had a markedly practical bent and therefore chose that which was proven by experience. The administrative organization proposed by von Luberas, on the other hand, was a theoretical system about whose consequences it was impossible to know anything. Not entirely without reason, some historians have felt there was a rivalry between Heinrich Pick and A. Ch. Pott von Luberas. In a letter sent in February 1718 (and thus before Luberas arrived in St. Petersburg) to Burgomaster Johann von Benckendorff of Riga, Pick wrote that “der Herr Luberas draussen sich mehr figure gegeben, alss man Ihm hier zustehen will, dann die von aussen eingclauffene Nachrichten machen eine schlechte Beschreibung von selnen Wesen, so dass man es schwer halten soil, wo Er noch eine Bedienung bey dem Bergs-Collegio davon träget. What Pick was referring to concerning Luberas’s behavior during his tour of Europe to recruit collegial personnel was apparently that Luberas claimed to have received more extensive authority from the tsar than he had in fact received. If we can believe Pick, therefore, Luberas had been given a limited role in the reform efforts right from the beginning, while Pick had been given the responsibility for developing a foundation for the Russian collegial reform on the basis of the materials he had collected in Sweden. Cederberg correctly perceived Pick’s and Luberas’s respective contributions to the Russian collegial reform when he wrote that: Der Freiherr von Luberas war gleichsfalls schon friiher in Schweden gewesen und hatte sich mit den dortigen Administrativ-, Justiz- und Finanzverhältnissen bekannt gemacht. Dennoch schien Fick darin dem Freiherrn voraus zu scin, Ibid., 429. Von Bulmerincq, II, 290. Cederberg, 26. See, too, Alexander Kizevetter, “Heinrich Fick in russischen Dienstcn,” Germanoslavica, 1 (1931/32), 596, who criticizes Cederberg’s statements that Fick had more influence on the collegial reform than did Luberas. Kizevetter argues that “Cederberg in diesem Fall wohl der iiblichen Neigung der Biographen unterlegen ist ihren Helden unter ihren besonderen Schutz zu nehmen.” 182 ” 183 184 188 184
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