Recruitment and Service in the Ranks 159
siderable administrative expertise to adjust unit boundaries to demographic
changes.
During the Seven Years War P. I. Shuvalov, the leading figure in the
military estahlishment M the time, d.f'."vised a scheme which, had it been fully
acted on, might have turned the Russian army into a territorial militia. He
pointed out, as Mi.innich (or Yaguzhinsky) had done, that the existing system
led to a gross waste of manpower, to a high desertion rate, and to uncertainty
among donors as to how many men they would have to supply at the next levy.
He proposed to divide each province into five sections, each of which would be
required in turn to furnish recruits at the rate of I per 100 souls. The units were
conceived as territorially discrete, since the governors were to delineate their
boundaries. However, Shuvalov undermined the impact of this proposed
reform by providing that the government might take recruits from more than
one section, or even from all of them, in case of emergency.^86 Only part of this
scheme (the instructions for implementing the levy) received Imperial assent,
and both during Shuvalov's supremacy and thereafter recruits continued to be
raised in the traditional manner.^87
In 1766 Catherine II reissued Shuvalov's so-called 'General Statute' with
only minor emendations.^88 Neither she nor the high-powered military commis-
sion which she appointed on her accession seems to have envisaged any basic
reform. The nineteenth-century military historian D. F. Maslovsky, anxious
to detect some sign of progress, claimed that the 1766 statute 'gave legislation
on military service greater stability and definition: people could now take com-
fort in the fact that, when the almost annual manifesto on the levy was issued,
its terms would not differ radically from those of the previous one'.^89 But
previously there had not been any such radical changes and Catherine, as we
know, was soon obliged to increase the quota when war broke out with the
Turks. In 1774 A. I. Vyazemsky made the sensible suggestion that recruits
should be taken at age 18 and required to serve for only 15 years.^90 He evi-
dently sought, as Pososhkov had, to move towards a smaller but better trained
army. However, Vyazemsky did not hold a senior military position and his
memorandum received the same fate as his predecessor's (although in this
'enlightened' era at least he suffered no harm).
Both Field-Marshal Rumyantsev and the Tsarevich Paul (Pavel Petrovich)
(who opposed his mother's policies on personal and philosophical grounds)
espoused the reformist cause. The former was in a position to put through
major changes had he wished to, but limited himself to a scheme for perma-
nent recruiting areas, much like those previously adumbrated. Again nothing
86 PSZ xiv. 10786 (23 Dec. 1757), introd., preamble,§§ 1-3.
87 Beskrovnyy, Russkaya armiya, p. 37; Petrov, Russkaya voyennaya silo, ii. 152 gives the
impression that the measure was implemented. For the levies, cf. PSZ xv. 10874, 10990 (30 Aug.
1758, 18 Sept. 1759).
88 PSZ xvii. 12478 (29 Sept. 1766).
89 Maslovsky, Materialy, ii Ii). 46.
90 Vyazemsky, 'Zapiska', p. 9.