B) Local government administration

In XIV – XV centuries principalities were divided on uyezdi and volosti. Town administration was represented by vicegerent (namestnik) in the uyezdi and volostelyami in volost. Local administration was based on the system of “kormleniye”.

At the beginning of XVI century there was carry out a series of zemsko-gubnih and judicial reforms.

After 1613 most of the local administrative organs common before the Troubles were liquidated or were absorbed into town governor administration. The title of vicegerent (namestnik) was still used at court as a ceremonial honorific, but vicegerents no longer governed in the provinces. The fortifications and siege stewards declined in number and became subordinate officials (prikaznye liudi) of the town governors’ offices. Customs and tavern administration remained in the hands of elected community representatives or taxfarmers, but they came under the supervision of the town governors, who supervised their operations and gave them quarterly or annual accountings. District-level and canton-level elected zemskii offices for tax collection and justice continued to exist in the north, but most of them were subordinated to the town governors, so that zemskii officials no longer dealt with the chancelleries directly but only through their local governor; the more important kinds of court cases traditionally heard in the district-level zemskii court were now held in the governor’s court, which also became a court of second instance over those matters still heard in zemskii courts; and the tax-collection activities of zemskii officials were subject to especially tight control from the governor’s office, for the governor had the authority to beat zemskii officials under righter (pravezh), that is, in the stocks, for any tax arrears or irregularities and the tendency was towards requiring zemskii collections to be turned in to the governor’s office.

For some time the guba constabulary offices for policing and investigating felonies were permitted greater autonomy, for Moscow saw some advantage in keeping the defence of the community against banditry and violent crime in the hands of elected community representatives – especially as those elected as chief constables were supposed to be the communities’ ‘best men’, ideally prosperous dvoriane or deti boiarskie, reporting their investigations directly to the Robbery Chancellery (Razboinyi prikaz) at Moscow for pronouncement of verdict.

The guba system was therefore not expanded; the town governors increasingly sought to subordinate the guba officials de facto; and in 1679 all guba offices were closed.

Town governor administration operated under closer central chancellery control than had vicegerent administration in the previous century because the town governors’ offices were held to higher expectations of written reporting and compliance with written instructions. The town governors were guided in their general or long-term responsibilities by written working orders (nakazy), and in more particular and non-routine matters by decree rescripts from the chancelleries; they were expected to submit frequent reports, even if all they had to relate was their progress in implementing relatively routine directives; and they had to maintain an increasingly wide range of rolls, inventories, land allotment and surveying books, court hearing inquest transcripts and account books for various indirect and direct revenues. Inventories of the archives of governors’ offices generally showa significant increase in the rate of record production, especially from mid-century. This reflected the increasing demands upon the governors’ offices by the central chancelleries, but also the demands upon them from the community in terms of litigation and petitioning of needs and grievances. [2, 467]

Because the primary purpose of the governor’s office was to gather and systematize information to facilitate executive decision-making in the central chancelleries and duma, the clerical staffing of the governor’s offices was a crucial concern. It was the governor’s clerks (pod’iachie) who produced, routed and stored all this information and kept order in the town archive and treasury. The clerks also performed important tasks in the field – supervising corv´ee, conducting obysk polling at inquests, conveying cash to and from Moscow, or surveying property boundaries.