The police activity of the government was predominantly of the first nature, but in the 18th century the second began to emerge more and more: with a number of different institutions, the government positively satisfied various social needs, making up for the lack of private initiative with its comprehensive power. The government’s view of its broad police activity was expressed with particular completeness and clarity in the regulations of the chief magistrate of 1721, which states: “the police promotes rights and justice, gives birth to good orders and moral teachings, and provides all security from robbers, thieves, rapists and deceivers and the like, dishonest and indecent.” drives away the pressure, and forces everyone to work and to an honest trade, makes good inspectors, careful and kind servants, regularly creates cities and streets in them, prevents high prices and brings contentment in everything necessary for human life, warns everyone who resigns from illness, makes the streets and houses clean, prohibits excess in household expenses and all obvious errors, looks after the poor, the poor, the sick, the poor and other poor people, 1) Sy, St.
3. Vol. II, art. 4059 - 4061, edition of 1857. It protects widows, orphans, and foreigners, according to God's commandments, educates the young in chaste purity and honest sciences; and above all these, the police is the soul of citizenship and of all good orders, and the fundamental support of human safety and convenience 2).' The organs of this broad police activity of the government in the 18th century were the regional rulers — governors and the voivodes subordinate to them. Therefore, the scope of the police activity of the governors expanded more and more. In particular, they oversaw: 1) the eradication of robberies, vagrancy, and brigandage; 2) the prevention of fires; 3) the construction sector and communication routes in the governorate; 4) they promoted industry; 5) they managed public charity; 6) they ensured the public food supply; 7) they protected public health. But no matter how great these escapes of soldiers and recruits were, they were nothing compared to the escapes of peasants, which were especially significant in the border governorates. To prevent these escapes, guards were posted on the borders of the Smolensk governorate, but the fleeing peasants, arming themselves with bear spears, bardiches, and cudgels, crossed the border, defeating the guards 1). In 1798, the Arzamas, Alatyr, Penza, and Simbirsk landowners complained to the government that in their uyezds — in towns, dugouts, and forests — lived about 5,000 fugitives 2); a complaint about fugitive peasants was soon filed by the Baltic nobility as well 3). During the census of revision souls in the Siberian governorate in 1724, there turned out to be 5,389 fugitive peasants in it 4), and following that in the Kazan governorate — 3,292 people 5). Sometimes the landowners themselves equipped entire expeditions to search for their fugitive peasants: thus, for example, the Lithuanian nobility complained in 1736 that Russian nobles, gathering in large numbers with cudgels and bear spears, were coming to Lithuania to their noble estates to search for their fugitive peasants and at the same time were robbing, beating, torturing, and ruining them, taking them away to Russia with their wives and children 6). The escapes of the peasants were all the more possible because on the Don 7) and on the Yaik 8) there was always a ready and reliable refuge for the fugitive. Besides soldiers and recruits, and besides peasants, post-drivers (yamshchiks) also frequently fled from their post settlements to get rid of the heavy post conscription: in 1790, many post-drivers fled from among those who had been selected by the governors from various provinces for settlement in St. Petersburg 9), in 1740, post-drivers also fled from the Tosno and Sosna post stations (yamy) 10). There was, thus, a multitude of burlaks who did not know their [origins] ) O. S.
3. M, 6982, *) I.S. 3. No. 4976, 6893. - °) P.S.