As the century closed, this focus was, for good or ill, lost. Peter and his cohort were enamoured of a different vision of the state and its goals, one that was as new to Russia as it was profoundly alien to the Muscovite spirit. Aleksei Mikhailovich could no more have said he was the 'first servant of the state' than he could have sworn off the Orthodox faith. He could not serve the state because he owned the state. It was his instrument to do with as his master - God in Heaven - commanded. Neither could his servitors have said they were serving anything like the 'common good'. Such a thing was impossible, for they were honourable men and truly honourable men served only God and his representative, the tsar. As for the rest - all those who were neither tsars nor servants of tsars - they just did not matter.Local government and administration
BRIAN DAYIES
There were two important developments affecting local government in the period 1613-89. The first was the spread of the town governor system of local administration. In the sixteenth century annually appointed town commandants (godovye voevody) with some civil as well as military authority had been found in some districts on the southern and western frontier. But by the 1620s most districts were under commandants turned town governors (gorodovye voevody), with staffs of clerks and constables, and exercising authority over the guba and zemskii elders, fortifications stewards, siege captains and other local officials. Responsibility for most aspects of defence, taxation, policing, civil and criminal justice, the remuneration of servicemen and the regulation of pomest'e landholding at the district level was now concentrated in the town governors' offices. The second development was the increasing reliance of town governor administration on codified law, written instructions and regular reporting and account-keeping. This enhanced central chancellery control over local administration and partly compensated for the avocational nature of town governor service.
The spread of town governor administration
The universalisation of gorodovyi voevoda administration had been a response to the breakdown of the political order in the Time of Troubles. On the one hand, the spread of town governor administration across the southern frontier in the late sixteenth century had helped to fuel the Troubles: mass discontent with the heavy burdens of defence duty and agricultural corvee on the 'Sovereign's tithe ploughlands' had led to the overthrow of several southern frontier town governors and placed much of the south in the hands of the First False Dmitrii and successor insurgents. On the other hand, after the disintegration of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii's regime in 1608 the tasks of defeating the rebels and foreign invaders and re-establishing strong central authority fell by default to other town governors, notably P. P. Liapunov of Riazan' and D. M. Pozharskii of Zaraisk, who had the military experience and political connections to lead the governors and lesser officials of the towns of the north-east into forming an army of national liberation and a provisional government. In coalition with certain boyars and cossack leaders Pozharskii's army drove the Poles from Moscow (1612) and restored the Russian monarchy under the new Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (1613). It was natural that the new Romanov monarchy should see its continued survival in the utmost centralisation and militarisation of provincial government - the logical agents of which were the town governors, appointed by and accountable to the central chancelleries, selected from the court nobility, and given broad authority over district military, fiscal, judicial and police affairs. Upon Tsar Michael's accession his government was supposedly deluged with collective petitions from the provinces, 'from many towns, from the dvoriane and deti boiarskie and various servicemen and inhabitants', begging that town governors be placed in charge of their districts, for 'without town governors their towns would not exist'.[35] Whether these petitions really represented local will or its ventriloquism by the central government cannot be determined, but three days later the central government authorised the general restoration and expansion of town governor rule, to all districts in need of town governors. Whereas town governor administration had been confined mostly to the western and southern frontiers before the Troubles, it came to prevail throughout the centre and north as well by the 1620s. By 1633 there were 190 governors' offices, and 299 by 1682.[36]
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 tax- farmers, 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. Besides reducing the need to send down special inquisitors from Moscow, this would have the advantage of shifting blame for policing failures from state officials to community representatives. Moscow's preference for the continued independence of the guba system was indicated in the 1649 Ulozhenie and 1669 New Decree Statutes as well as in a 1627 decree that announced that guba chief constables should be elected in all towns. But this came up against fiscal and manpower concerns: maintaining guba offices cost the community additional taxes, and in wartime prosperous dvoriane and deti boiarskie were needed in the army, not at home performing constabulary duties which could be assumed by the town governors or, in worst cases, by inquisitors from the Robbery Chancellery. 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.[37]
35
P. Ivanov,
36
N. F. Demidova,
37
V N. Glaz'ev