renamed“secretaries,”but the Table left their status ambiguous; a law of 1724
allowed them hereditary nobility, but throughout the century nobles tried to close
this loophole. All other Muscovite chancery workers, undersecretaries in particular,
ranked below the Table. So Russia’s administration struggled to meet the model of
a well-ordered police state.
OFFICIALDOM BETWEEN PETER AND CATHERINE
From 1725 to 1762, Russia’s rulers paid little constructive attention to civil
administration, squeezing it for resources to pay for pressing needs. As we have
seen, within a year Peter’s successors were retrenching his expensive programs,
particularly non-military. They consolidated judiciary and administration, return-
ing to the Muscovite model of all-purpose, unprofessional governors. The number
of gubernii was reduced by 1728 from 11 to 9, divided into a total of 28 provinces
(down from 45) and about 170 districts (uezdy). Staffing was even more reduced,
particularly at the crucial level of undersecretaries, the heart-blood of chancery work
where expertise might be lodged. At the end of the seventeenth century, there were
1,900; under Peter I, 1,200, but in the late 1720s only 660. The immediate effect
was striking: in 1698 there were three times more employees in central agencies
than in 1726; in local agencies, 1.5 more; in all, twice as many workers in
government offices in 1698 than 1726. An already“under-governed”realm had
become even less well served: in 1698 there was one state employee for every 2,250
people, but in 1726 there was one per 3,400.
As in Muscovy, but even less well supported, governors were placed at the
district, provincial, and gubernia level, each with a small garrison and each with
broad autonomies and little hierarchical subordination to governors at other levels.
Each heard criminal cases; until 1764 military commanders collected taxes from
village officials who actually apportioned and collected the funds, but after that,
governors did this role. As in Muscovite times, for assistance in rural policing,
governors relied on local forces (state peasant village organization, landlords’
bailiffs, parish priests); they also oversaw police duties in towns, but the actual
work was done by neighborhoods, who organized gate watch,fire safety, and street
maintenance.
Understaffed and underfunded, bureaucracy became notoriously bad, not only
because the initial retrenchment strained the system, but also because the bureau-
cratic apparatus kept growing in the 1730s to 1750s. It grew in the direction of
centralization, reflecting concentration of power in the center, failure of executive
vision, and the nobility’s clamoring for prestigious and lucrative high office.
Powerful“Departments”were added to the Senate, paralleling the Colleges, for
military,fiscal, judicial, and borderland issues; new chanceries andkontorywere
created for functional (criminal and civil law) and regional (Siberia, Livonia) issues.
Between 1726 and 1742 numbers of central administrative staff rose by four times,
with highest offices (those listed on the Table of Ranks, orchinovniki) climbing by
4.5 times. At the same time, local governments were not sufficiently staffed to
Army and Administration 303