Tht• S!ruggle for Sun"il'a/ 187
system had come inro exisren,·e: H'Sl'rn· ma)<!a1inc' in prain-)lrtl\in1o1 rc,:i''"'
under rhe l'(llllrnl 1,f a ,·c1111;ll ;1. .:.·1i.·,. the 1'1," 1;1111 .,,,,,"'' ·, ''"'h'"· '"''''''' .11
.:lr1n~· tl.1h''•- .h\•, • .~!~~P !.".,'? ·,,,,~i '•"'•'~" )'1'''''"'1'' "'' ,,.,, ""'"'h, '""'
llhlt'>ik 111111, '"""'' ,,,uld r.•11"" 111<· 111'•'1'' ,•11 •• 1111p.11~11.•'"
A major druwtrnd. Ill l'ffi,·il'lll mana~,·111,·111 (apall from lhl' 11hiq11i1011'
rats!) was the rension 1ha1 lkvdopl·d hclWl'l'll nl fi,·ial~ al vurious levels. Other
conflicts arose between these functionaries and rhcir civilian suppliers, as well
as with field officers. Some of the latter believed that official price-setting raised
costs and would have preferred a system of direct requisitioning.^70 Landowners
complained that the fixed price (spravochnaya tsena) was too low and that pur-
chasing agents were under orders to keep it as low as possible. In practice what
happened was that each party tried to buy the others' goodwill in an effort to
keep the bureaucratic wheels turning. Suppliers would pay magazine super-
visors to accept their deliveries; the 'provisions commissioners' tipped the more
reliable contractors and the officials who fixed the prices; and field officers
might be persuaded to accept produce they knew to be sub-standard.
Regulations issued in 175871 prescribed officials' conduct in exhaustive detail,
yet there were no effective administrative checks against such abuses. The wide
fluctuations in grain prices made it impossible to ensure that the deals concluded
locally were above board, and the senior authorities set a poor example. Ya. P.
Shakhovskoy, appointed General War Commissar in 1753, was offered a
25,000-rouble bribe by a contractor; he turned it down but admits he was temp-
ted, since he needed the money for his daughter's dowry.^72 No such scruples
seem to have bothered his successor, A. I. Glebov. a Shuvalov protege whose
business speculations brought him a large fortune. Under Peter III he rose to
become Procurator-General; Catherine II dismissed him from that post, call-
ing him 'a rogue and a cheat', but later permitted him to resume his office
(1764), which he held until 1775; he was then again sacked and, after a lengthy
investigation, expelled from the state service. Upon his death ( 1790) the
government obtained 157 ,000 roubles from his sequ·estered estate, but the
money was returned to his heirs by Paul 1.^73
This emperor continued the policy of centralization that had been embarked
on in the last years of his predecessor's reign.^74 The supply commissariat was
placed under the War College, but this did not lead to much improvement.
Paul's choice as departmental head, Major-General P. Kh. Obolyaninov, was
unpopular with his colleagues-'his hot temper and crude manner sometimes
made relations with him extremely difficult', writes his biographer-and this
(^69) Maslovsky, Materialy, i. t22, ii. 37-8; Bogdanovich, R11sskaya armiya, p. 35; Beskrovnyy,
Russkaya armiya, p. 380. On corruption in the commissaria1: Langeron, 'Russkaya armiya', 3,
pp. 150:.1.
(^70) P. Panin to Pavel Petrovich, 12 Jan. 1779, 'Perepiska', p. 762.
(^71) PSZ xv. 10789 (9 Jan. 1758); cf. xvii. 12459 (24 Aug. 1765).
72 Shakhovskoy, Zapiski, p. 78.
(^71) N. Chulkov, 'Glebov, A. I.', RBS vi. 34t-8.
(^74) PSZ xxiii. 16959, xxiv. t 7750, § 2, 17768, I ROIO.