Division II. Administrative division of the empire in the 18th century

3. M. 5585. 8613. 7638.— °) P. S. Z. No. 6351.— uyezds were demarcated in 1724 when governors were ordered “at the boundaries of every uyezd, where an uyezd is separated from an uyezd, as a sign according to the Swedish custom, to place flat stone pillars at the state's expense with a carved inscription on those pillars ').” Uyezds were demarcated even more precisely by the decree of October 11, 1764, from which it is evident that some uyezds, due to the constant assignment of their parts to other uyezds, had decreased so much that the number of inhabitants of a certain uyezd did not exceed 1,000 souls. Therefore, “for the sake of inconvenience in the uyezd divisions,” the decree of 1764 ordered those uyezds, the number of inhabitants of which did not exceed 10,000 souls according to the last revision, to be assigned to other uyezds, but in such a way that after the unification there would not be more than 30,000 souls in one uyezd °); this was already a step towards that symmetrical division which was introduced by the establishment of the gubernias. The General Land Survey also had an influence on the rounding of regional units: in the instructions to land surveyors of 1766, it was prescribed to make uyezd boundary lines *). But only the publication of the statute on gubernias, which stipulated that in uyezds or okrugs there should be counted from 20,000 to 30,000 souls *)—gave the uyezds the appearance of precise and defined administrative districts. The designation of centers for these uyezds was extremely artificial: from here, perhaps, originates that common feature of our uyezd towns, that they are towns only in name, while in reality they represent the weakest development of urban life. With the establishment of viceroyalties, villages were turned into uyezd towns. This was usually entrusted to governors-general. Here is how Mr. Melnikov describes this transformation of villages into towns: “...they cleared one peasant hut for the uyezd court, another for the lower zemstvo court, a third for the town governor's board, a fourth for the prison, a fifth for the 'brought-in convicts,' a sixth *) P. S. Z. No. 4821. p. 3.— for the guardhouse, etc. The chairman of some chamber, and sometimes the viceroy himself, would arrive from the gubernia town, gather the officials of the nascent town, perform public prayers, draw up a protocol, and declare the town open. The speed with which towns were opened then is amazing, barely credible. In all fairness, it should be attributed to the number of those miracles with which the brilliant age of Catherine is so rich. In the Nyzhniy Novgorod viceroyalty, for example, twelve towns were made in eight days, actually not even in eight, but in six, because one day was Sunday, and another was New Year's Day—and it was not the custom then to open towns on holidays. Therefore, there were two towns per day, and only four people opened them. With such speed of action, such phenomena were inevitable that would seem strange in our time: it happened that towns were opened in absentia. Thus, the chairman of the Nyzhniy Novgorod criminal court, Bilokopytov, opened the uyezd town of Vasyl, forty versts before reaching it. Having opened the town of Makariev on December 28, 1779, he hurried to open all the towns that fell to his share before the New Year: for this, without stopping in Vasyl, he opened it in absentia, in the village of Spaske, on December 30, and the next day, i.e., on New Year's Eve, he opened the third town—Serhach.” From here originated, as Mr. Melnikov shows, the extremely artificial arrangement of our uyezd towns: the sub-monastic sloboda of the Makariev Monastery was turned into an uyezd town, while, by the way, on the opposite bank of the Volga stood the rich and industrial village of Lyskovo; next to the miserable sloboda of Kniagynina, turned into an uyezd town, stood the significant village of Murashkino, not far from the slobodka of Horbatova—three industrial and rich villages of Pavlovo, Vorsma, and Bohorodske. The same thing happened in the Kazan viceroyalty, where Tsarevokokshaisk and Tsyvilsk were turned into towns, and the rich village of Bohorodske was not made a town. In the Simbirsk viceroyalty, Buinsk, Senhilei, Tahai, and Kanadei were made towns, and not Usollia, Promzyno, Poretske. In the Vladimir viceroyalty—Horokhovets, Melenky, Kovrov, and not Ivanovo, Mstera, and Liezhnievo, etc. An obstacle to a correct and more consistent with local circumstances distribution of uyezd towns was the serf dependence of those villages and slobodas, which it would have been more rational to turn into uyezd towns '). The uyezds consisted of pryhorodoks (assigned towns—as opposed to real towns), volosts, and stans. Many pryhorodoks were abolished by the decree of October 11, 1764, i.e., left off the staff list *), and from them were formed the so-called and still existing 'supernumerary' towns. The number of these pryhorodoks in the uyezds varied: sometimes 10 assigned towns belonged to one real town (e.g., in the Kazan province) *), and before the abolition, each of them was governed by its own voivode. Volosts and stans did not yet constitute in the 18th century such defined administrative units as at present. State villages were assigned to volosts and the order of their internal administration was established only by the decree of August 7, 1797. “) As for the stans, their correct distribution among the uyezds was established only by the General Land Survey under Catherine II—until that time, the affiliation of stans to uyezds was still determined by the scribe books, and from this sometimes great inconsistencies arose: a certain stan, belonging according to the scribe books to one uyezd, lay in the middle of another. So, for example, the Khokhlovsky stan according to the scribe books belonged to the Maloyaroslavets uyezd, but lay within the boundaries of the Obolensk uyezd, to which it was assigned in 1769 5). Volosts and stans included rural communities, the distinction of which from urban communities at this time became fully defined. Urban communities began to separate little by little from rural ones as early as the 17th century. The main moments in this separation: the decree of 1648, confirmed in the Ulozhenie, as a result of which private estates lying near towns were taken away from their owners and assigned to the tiaglo lands—the town land was thus rounded off and separated from the uyezd lands. A further step was taken by the New Trade Statute of 1667, according to which merchants in everything that related to their travels were removed from the jurisdiction of the voivodes and subordinated to the customs heads, who were elected by the posad people—the foundation was laid for urban self-government. The distinction of the urban community from the rural one was even more clearly marked by the decree of 1681 on the introduction of the streltsy tax, imposed only on tiaglo towns, on palace towns and slobodas, on the uyezds of the Pomor towns, and on the Olonets uyezd. By the decrees of 1689, 1695, 1697, and 1698, urban self-government was expanded even more: voivodes were finally removed from participation in the collection of taxes, and the collection and delivery to Moscow were entrusted to the zemstvo elders. Finally, urban administration was definitively established in 1699, when all towns with the Pomor uyezds were placed under the jurisdiction of the zemstvo burmisters, subordinate to the Moscow Ratusha. With the establishment of magistrates, the Pomor uyezds were separated from the towns, and the towns formed special estate communities °. From this time, the structure of urban administration became fully defined, which, having undergone various changes during the 18th century, received its present character by the Charter to the Towns of 1785. But even in the 18th century we meet examples of the enserfment of urban communities [All this is detailed and clearly expounded by Mr. Chicherin in 'Regional Institutions of Russia in the 17th Century' and in 'Review of the Historical Development of the Rural Community in Russia'. In his reply to Mr. Belyaev ('More on the Rural Community'), the opposite view on the development of the community in general, and the urban community in particular, is brilliantly refuted]: Yamburg and Koporye were given into the private possession of Prince Menshikov, the town of Wenden was secured for Chancellor Bestuzhev. The rural community in the 18th century also little by little approached its modern appearance. By the end of the 17th century, the black volosts, with the exception of the Pomor uyezds, merged with the palace estates, and thus the proprietary communities became predominant—palace, monastic, church, and landlord, subdivided into patrimonial and service estate ones. By the decree of 1719 on the introduction of the poll tax, these proprietary communities were contrasted with state communities, composed of yasak-paying non-Russians settled in the south and east, odnodvortsi, and black-ploughing peasants in the north. Thus, alongside the proprietary communities, free—state—communities emerged. Soon after, changes also occurred in the proprietary communities: landlord communities, after the merging of service estates with patrimonies '), turned from service estate and patrimonial ones into solely patrimonial ones, subdividing according to the method of their economic management into corvée and quitrent ones. Secularized by Catherine II, the peasants of the spiritual department, together with the state and palace peasants, were placed in 1775 under the jurisdiction of the state chambers, under the general name of state peasants. This unification of the former palace settlements with other state ones continued until Emperor Paul I, who by the Statute on the Imperial Family of April 5, 1797, again separated from the state estates [The first trace of this merger can be noticed in 1701, when the service estates and properties of the Smolensk shliakhta were given as patrimonies. No. 1885. The decree of March 23, 1714 on single inheritance united service estates with patrimonies and some other properties under the general name of immovable properties, subordinating them to the same order of inheritance. No. 2189. Finally, Empress Anna Ioannovna, having abolished the decree on single inheritance on March 17, 1731, confirmed, however, 'both service estates and patrimonies are to be called equally one immovable property...' No. 8717.] the appanage estates, which were to constitute a fund providing for the maintenance of the members of the Imperial Family °). Thus, by the end of the 18th century, the rural community appeared in three types: the state, appanage, and landlord community. The present time represents a striving to smooth out these different types, to transform them into one: by the Imperial decree of June 20, 1858 and the Imperially approved rules: 1) on the transition of appanage peasants into urban and other free rural estates and 2) on petitioning in litigation, claim, and generally civil cases of these peasants with persons of other estates—those restrictions were abolished which significantly brought these peasants closer to the landlord ones; with the emancipation of the serf peasants, the landlord communities will also be placed in a different position. Thus, during the 18th century, new regional units were established little by little, replacing the extremely motley and diverse administrative division of the 17th century. At the same time, the government tried to make land maps and plans for the new administrative districts—gubernias, provinces, uyezds, towns, and stans. Thus, in 1728 geodesists were sent to compile land maps for the gubernias, provinces, and uyezds °); in 1764 a decree was issued on the drawing of special plans of all gubernias with their towns 3); in 1769 it was ordered to compile uyezd and stan boundary books and plans *), and in 1770 it was decided to make stan plans separately from the uyezd ones 5). Thus appeared a new administrative division: the empire was divided into gubernias, gubernias into provinces, provinces into uyezds, consisting of volosts and stans. A volost is a set of rural communities, from which towns became separate. However, the traces of the former division did not disappear immediately, and during the 18th century, not infrequently P. S.