the state budget but at rates less than other officials in similar ranks; their chancery
staffs were similarly less well provided for by the state. By 1784, when the reforms
had expanded through most of the empire, the old Central Magistrate was abol-
ished, its duties having been given to the cities themselves.
The reform and the 1782 Police Code directed particular attention to urban
policing. Towns were to have a Police Board (Uprava blagochiniia) with the town
director (gorodnichii), two bailiffs for civil and criminal affairs, and two counselors
from the town magistrate. Towns were to be divided into sections, each with at least
two policemen and other minor officials to oversee public order in thePolizeistaat
sense: building codes, public hygiene,fire safety, morals offenses, and misconduct.
As the abolition of the Central Magistrate suggests, the 1775 reform distributed
the duties of the Colleges to governors and their gubernia boards; most Colleges
were abolished in the 1780s, except for those of the War, Commerce, Navy, and
Foreign Affairs. The reform was a combination of central control and decentralized
execution. The empress maintained central control through governor-generals, the
oversight of the Senate’s First Department, and procurator-general with his local
procurators around the realm. Within the gubernia governors exercised centralized
power over districts. Still, day-to-day administration was decidedly decentralized.
Implementing the Organic Law around the realm took more than a decade and
when done, reflected the tremendous diversity of empire. When the reform began,
there were ten gubernii in central Russia, with a total of 188 districts, and nineteen
gubernii in the borderlands, with 325 district-level entities; when it was concluded
in the 1790s, European Russia had 26 gubernii with 321 districts and the border-
lands 24 gubernii with 264 districts. Eight“oblasti,”units distinguished by ethnic
composition or scattered and sparse population, were also carved out with minimal
administrative change—five in the borderlands, three in the center. By 1796 the
total was 50 gubernii with 585 local administrative units.
Although Russia’s map had been made much more uniform, in the borderlands
the 1770s–80s administrative reforms often perpetuated existing district-level units
and maintained native courts, languages, and elites with Russian supervision. The
Don Cossack lands remained untouched by the reforms, for example, maintaining
Cossackstanitsyand Cossack government, overseen by the governor-general of
New Russia and the Don. Where sufficient noblemen were lacking for appointed or
elected positions, non-Russian nobles (Baltic Germans, Ukrainians, Poles) moved
into these roles, forging a transnational imperial nobility. In ethnically diverse areas
lacking landed nobility such as Siberia, Bashkiria, and northern Caucasus, the
reform was simplified to minimize noble representatives.
Across the borderlands, local traditions were taken into account at the lower
court level (rasprava). Left Bank and Sloboda Ukraine maintained most previous
Cossack administrative divisions, and continued at the local level to use Cossack
laws, even as elites assimilated into the Russian nobility. In the northern Caucasus,
local laws were maintained at the lower court level. In Belarus’an lands won in
thefirst partition of Poland, Polish law and language continued in local courts as
long as it did not contravene Russian law; with appeals at the gubernia level, John
Le Donne suggests that“a body of jurisprudence developed...combining Great
310 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801