These dilemmas of the central government can be seen both in the general scope of local government legislation and in relation to the functions given to particular institutions and individuals. The centre determined the boundaries of units of local administration (and re-drew them at various times either to increase efficiency or to incorporate new territorial acquisitions, often with a deliberate neglect of historical territorial division), defined, created and abolished towns (and designed their coats of arms and determined the layouts of
1 M. Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies andRussia, 1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 206.
the streets and the architectural styles to be employed),2 decided the structure, social composition and areas of competence of all provincial and urban institutions, defined the membership and groupings of urban society, determined and altered the franchise for towns, noble assemblies and zemstvos, and set the fiscal and other obligations of all institutions, including taxation and billeting of troops in civilian houses (that is, state and not local needs). At the same time, local institutions from the time of Peter I were obliged to report and respond to 'local needs' and to stimulate the local economy
The example of urban government in the eighteenth century will illustrate how government legislation could bear little relation to reality. Peter I and Catherine II tried to stimulate the corporate identity of townspeople and the economic development of Russian towns through legislation which deliberately attempted to incorporate 'Western' or 'European' practices. Both rulers attempted to introduce 'Western'-style craft guilds and passed regulations on their composition and on the training of apprentices (in 1785 Catherine even stipulated the hours of work for apprentices including the length of meal breaks!).3 Both rulers defined the composition of urban society by law, and in addition divided the merchantry into groups according to their declared capital, and then used these groupings as a basis for the composition of an elaborate structure of urban institutions of self-government based on representatives from each group (six groups in the Charter to the Towns in 1785). These definitions were modified in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I but not fundamentally altered.
This legislation, however, ignored the reality of eighteenth-century urban life. In practice, very few towns outside a few exceptional centres like St Petersburg and Moscow had a sufficiently developed economy or sufficiently wealthy merchants to fill all the social categories of townspeople as defined by Peter and Catherine. In 1786 it was reported that in the province of St Petersburg only the city of St Petersburg itself had representatives of all six urban groups and that only there were merchants divided into three guilds as Catherine had stipulated; the smaller district towns could not fill these social categories.4 Urban government could never therefore function as the legislation envisaged
2 R. Jones, 'Urban Planning and Development of Provincial Towns in Russia during the Reign of Catherine II', in J. G. Garrard (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 321-44.
3 PSZ, vol. 22, no. 16188, article 105, p. 378, The Charter to the Towns, 1785.
4 RGADA Moscow, Fond 16, d. 530, ll. 266-66ob, report by N. Saltykov to the Senate, 1786, also quoted in J. M. Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire 1650-1825 (London and New York: Longman, 1999), p. 42. This theme is developed more fully in J. M. Hartley, 'Governing the City: St Petersburg and Catherine II's reforms', in A. Cross (ed.), St Petersburg, 1703-1825 (London: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 99-118.
in the eighteenth century because representatives ofsome ofthe social groups on which the institutional structure was built simply did not exist. Furthermore, Russian towns in this period were overwhelmingly peasant in composition (state and serf) and these peasants were not only excluded from urban government but could also undercut urban guilds with their own home-made products. The attempt to revitalise urban life whist ignoring the peasant presence in the towns, the competition of peasant craft goods and the impossibility of separating the town from the countryside in an overwhelmingly rural economy made the import of Western-style institutions simply impractical. The dilemma facing local institutions of having to respond to local needs whilst carrying out their obligations to the state can also be seen in the weakness of eighteenth-century urban institutions. Service in urban institutions was unpopular and regarded as yet another state obligation - like billeting and conscription - imposed on a long-suffering and impoverished urban population. Urban institutions had only limited rights to impose taxation for local needs; their main function was to meet state fiscal obligations.
The ambiguity between local and national obligations is even more clearly illustrated by the zemstvos after 1864. Zemstvos were given considerable local rights, including the right to petition the governor directly on local concerns, to manage the local postal system, to have responsibility for local education and health, and to levy taxes for local as well as national needs. But these rights had only been granted after a ministerial struggle (in the centre, not in the provinces) over the merits of self-government versus central control. At the same time the governor was given the right to veto zemstvo activity if it conflicted with state interests. In practice, this meant inevitable conflict between zemstvos and local officials from the start and resulted in the curbing of the zemstvos' independent sphere of activities in 1890. This curb did nothing to ease relations between the zemstvo and the bureaucracy, and zemstvo radicalism increased after the accession of Nicholas II in 1894. Conflicts at the local level between zemstvo and governor were most heated over the zemstvos' right of taxation, particularly to raise income to provide education and healthcare, but more acute conflicts arose at the turn of the century between the zemstvos and officials in St Petersburg who by this stage not only opposed the rights of the zemstvo to claim much-needed taxation revenue but also had come to distrust every manifestation of what they regarded as elements of radical opposition to the regime.[21]
The most serious conflict between the zemstvos and the central bureaucracy focused on the scope for inter-zemstvo contact and co-operation, a conflict which became part of the liberal opposition movement to the tsar up to and including the year 1905. Zemstvos were instructed to deal only with matters within the boundaries of their province and district. This restriction was based on the fear that the zemstvos, as representative bodies, albeit not democratic ones, would seek to expand their responsibilities upwards through co-operation with other provincial zemstvos and then ultimately in the 'crowning edifice' of a national body. The number of resolutions passed by zemstvos which included constitutional demands shows that this fear was not unfounded. This conflict was won by the zemstvos in the early twentieth century just as their political threat to the government diminished following the establishment of the State Duma and just as many of the provincial nobility who dominated the zemstvos were coming to renounce these liberal views. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and again in the First World War, the government permitted the formation of an all-Russian union of zemstvos for the purpose of war relief.6
21
The relations between zemstvos and the centre are best described in T. Fallows, 'The Zemstvo and Bureaucracy', in T. Emmons and W S. Vucinich (eds.),