Section I. General view of the development of regional administration in the 18th century

50. Churykov bypassed his competitors and took the contract at a high price. There was generally no relationship in which the voivode and the chancellery would not manage to extract an income for themselves: when the oath of allegiance to Catherine II was taking place, the voivode of the city of Valuyky in the Bilhorod governorate, Collegiate Assessor Klementiev, along with the clerk Bocherov, 'not only for other things, but also for administering the oath of loyalty to H.I.M. took bribes'; a similar case occurred in the Novgorod provincial chancellery, where the registrar Yakiv Renberg took bribes from poor people for administering the oath of allegiance. But the abuses of the regional rulers of the 18th century were not limited to extortion: being extortionists, they were terribly self-willed. This took place especially in remote provinces. To Kola, for example, for the preparation of state timber in 1754, the government sent the proxies Ivan Kilberkh and Petro Bok; peasants of the Dvina uyezd were given to them as servants. The Kola voivode Nechaiev forcibly took them all from their quarters to the voivode's chancellery, put them under guard, and the next day beat them with batogs, without any petition and without any official note, 'allegedly for an offense committed against him'. In remote Siberia, such willfulness of regional rulers was even more possible. In 1746, the Yenisei voivode, Petro Myrovych, committed the following affront to the judicial office: he came to the voivode's chancellery without a sword and uniform, in a domestic negligee — in a fur coat and a nightcap, 'and sat at the table in the place where the mirror of justice is kept, and received from Major Tuyusov, who had arrived in that province to audit the souls of the male sex, the decrees sent with him from Tobolsk, and having unsealed them, read them in that nightcap, about which the secretary Danylo Popov quietly informed him, and the clerk Komarov also submitted in writing that this was contrary to the decrees, but he did not accept their words, and he considered the soldier of the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment, Petro Halakhov, who was sent to enforce the collection of the poll tax, as a subordinate, sent decrees to him, and for his, Halakhov's, demands and representations, scolded him with obscenities'... As in the 17th century, the defenseless Siberian indigenous people suffered especially from the extortion of the regional rulers. Those sent by the voivodes to collect the yasak terribly oppressed them, took away their wives and children, and, taking them to different places, sold them. In 1737, investigators were sent to Siberia, and a special commander was appointed to Okhotsk to protect the indigenous people from the robbery of the voivodes. Nothing helped: in 1765, it again became known to the government that in the Siberian governorate and in the Irkutsk province, the yasak was being collected with extreme burden on the indigenous people, that the Siberian nobles, Cossacks, and boyar children sent for this collection and for the investigation of the offenses and ruins suffered by the indigenous people, gather more yasak than is due, and in the most unconscionable manner rob and ruin the voiceless and defenseless indigenous people. Thus, the regional rulers of the 18th century inherited much from their predecessors — from the voivodes of the 17th century. From the voivodes of the 17th century they also borrowed the non-fulfillment of the demands of the central government: for a long time they did not send records and reports on income and expenditure for the compilation of the assessment book for the entire state; they did not send revision lists; they did not submit reports on arrears; they collected them carelessly, and among other things, when after the peace with Sweden in 1721, Peter I forgave all arrears up to 1718, the voivodes and officials in some places collected the forgiven arrears for the sake of their own self-interest. If, thus, the demands of the government were not fulfilled...