l34 The Warrior Tsar, 1689-1725.vere only allowed second pickings, as it were, after the two military men had
:aken their share.^69 Relations between the latter and the regimental authorities
~ere ;ilso likely to be strained, since the komissar ot zemli was the first to be
:>lamed if supplies failed to arrive in the unit.
Rural Russia now found itself under military occupation. The peasants, and
to some extent the landowners too, had a multiplicity of authorities set over
them. In more favourable circumstances they might have exploited the
bureaucratic rivalries, but this was seldom possible now. At the summit were
guards officers invested with special powers, at the base the local colonel, and
in between them the various commissars. The guardsmen were 'trouble-
shooters' sent out by the emperor or his associates with orders to settle specific
problems. In 1724 there were 87 such individuals, only 16 of them officers, on
various errands in the provinces.^70 Two years earlier 20 officers and 274 men
of the Semenovsky guards regiment were reported to be absent on such mis-
sions.^71 Even senior officials trembled at the news of their approach. Land
commissars who allowed arrears to accumulate might be dragged around their
district in fetters by guardsmen, escorted by NCOs from the local garrison.^72
The voivode of Orel, summoned to the capital for some reason, could not obey
because he had been arrested by a mere ensign of· the Preobrazhensky regi-
ment. The deputy governor of Moscow, Brigadier I. L. Voyeikov, first
resisted these pressures spiritedly but in 1720 was compelled to yield to an
energetic sergeant from the same regiment named Yablonsky; th~reafter a
soldier·, P. Pustoshkin, for a time made himself virtual dictator of the former
capital and its environs.^73
Where such potentates were lacking, local affairs were determined largely by
the whims of the regimental colonel. He had two sets of instructions, one lay-
ing down how he was to deal with revenue matters and the other defining his
duties in the preservation of order.^74 The poll tax was to be collected in three
instalments during the winter months (December, February, and April). In
practice dues were exacted whenever the military authorities thought fit. If the
land commissar delayed action on the colonel's requests, the latter was to con-
sult with the governor and replace the elected official by a deputy whom the
electors were expected to have chosen in readiness for such an eventuality.^75
This provision vividly illustrates the essentially bogus nature of 'szlachta
democracy' in its Russian adaptation. The colonel was instructed to protect
the local inhabitants 'from all manner of impositions and wrongs'. He was not
69 Bogoslovsky, Obi. reforma, pp. 397-403; Peterson, Reforms (see fn. 48) p. 287.(^70) Bogoslovsky, Obi. reforma, p. 313; see now also Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristo-
cracy, pp. 50-4.
(^71) V. Aleksandrov, Gvardeytsy-doverennye lyudi Petra I (Moscow, 1947)-a rare pamphlet
written from a standpoint of uncritical adulation of the Imperial military elite.
72 Bogoslovsky, Obi. reforma, p. 315.
11 Ibid., p. 316.
74 PSZ vii. 4553-5 (26 June 1724); Rozengeym, Ocherki, pp. 194-8.
1s PSZ vii. 4534, §§ 3, 11.