There were various reasons to seek appointment as a town governor. It offered a rest from the rigours and risks of campaign duty, which is why measures had to be taken in wartime to tighten the Military Chancellery's control over appointments lest the provincial governors' offices become havens for shirkers. Those appointed to certain distant towns were immune from lawsuit for the duration of their terms. Governorships 'in array' (v razriade - as when one was appointed to govern a larger town with some authority over the governors of nearby lesser satellite towns) offered the opportunity to demonstrate higher mestnichestvo precedence over certain other nobles. Many seeking governorships were probably drawn by the opportunity to collect 'feeding' income in kind and cash (kormlenie, see below) to supplement their regular annual bounties from the sovereign's treasury.
Petitioners for appointment therefore usually cited as grounds their need for relief: they had been on campaign duty for many years with no real respite, held inadequate service lands, had fallen into debt and so sought governorships 'for their poverty'.[44] There were at any time many metropolitan nobles feeling themselves in need of relief, so there were usually multiple candidates available to take over vacant governorships. The chancelleries therefore had some choice as to whom to appoint - indeed, probably greater choice than in appointments to army commands, which were by nature 'in array' and therefore more subject to mestnichestvo precedence considerations.
But these motives for seeking appointment all treated town governor duty as merely avocational, a temporary surcease from the proper vocations of a metropolitan nobleman, duty in the field army and in the court. The Muscovite state service system had traditionally valorised field army and court duty over administrative duty in the provinces, so that rank promotions and raises to service bounties were much more often awarded for the former than for the latter. When town governors did see raises or royal gifts in honorarium, it was less likely to be as a reward for governor duty than part of a general distribution of largesse across the entire upper service class in commemoration of a special event such as a great military victory or the birth of a tsarevich. Nor was town governor duty as good a path to rank promotion or political influence as army and court duty, which were more visibly meritorious - performed in proximity to the sovereign and one's fellow nobles - and did not require long absence from the circles ofgossip, counsel and patronage at court that were so important to career advancement. Strictly speaking, town governor duty was not even routinely formally remunerated; it did not ordinarily carry its own salary precisely because it was considered a respite from vocational service. A notable appointed to a town governorship was usually expected to live off the annual zhalovanie bounty he already received in accordance with his rank and entitlement rating.11 Whatever feeding arrangement he could negotiate with those he governed was his own concern, unless the chancelleries received complaint that he was extorting too much of it.
Therefore, although governorships were reserved for servitors of Moscow rank, that is, members of the metropolitan nobility, and the governorships of especially important towns like Novgorod and Astrakhan' might go to the elite of duma rank, the vast majority of governorships were given out to the middle and lower Moscow ranks; and while examination of service career patterns shows many metropolitan nobles taking turns at town governor duty, it presents few instances of them specialising in it. Those serving as town governors did so only avocationally, and most of them only on infrequent occasions, with little or no prior experience. There was little opportunity for them to familiarise themselves fully with bureaucratic routines and norms, and little reason for them to internalise a professional bureaucratic ethos.
Fortunately there were mechanisms partly compensating for the avoca- tional character of town governor service.
While the discipline of career bureaucratic service was largely alien to the Muscovite metropolitan nobility, the discipline of general state service was not. Since the mid-fifteenth century the metropolitan nobility had been liable for compulsory life service to the sovereign - if not so much for provincial administrative service, certainly for court service and especially service in the field army. The Muscovite notable therefore differed from the Western European notable in accepting to a far greater degree the notion that rank and entitlements derived from service to the sovereign (even if town governor duty was not the preferred service track for winning them); more importantly, even while he was resting from campaign duty by feeding in the provinces as a town governor he remained under a military discipline which provided penalties for malfeasance.
In districts where the governor's office had direct responsibility for tax collection as well as tax recording the governor could be held accountable to the central chancelleries for any arrears or deficits caused by unfair or negligent collection measures as well as by embezzlement. Even for minor deficits he could be fined, deprived of rank, subjected to corporal punishment, imprisoned or exiled. When such irregularities had been caught at Moscow during examination of records submitted from the governor's office, the task of exacting the missing sum and imposing a fine or other penalty was entrusted to chancellery clerks and constables sent down for the purpose. In general, though, irregularities were not so easily discovered this way because until late in the century most chancelleries were not insistent that governors regularly send in full copies of their income and expenditure books (the Military Chancellery, for example, began requiring this only from 1685); they only required regular submission of short summaries (smety) comparing the current year's balance with that of the previous year and brief projections (pomety) of revenue and expenditure for the coming year. This may be why, when chancellery officials were sent down to exact arrears and deficits, it was sometimes to several districts in succession, arrears and deficits having been found to have accumulated undetected for some time across a broad region. In 1646, for example, the Ustiug Territorial Chancellery authorised that 35,000 roubles of missing revenues be exacted from the governors of several districts in its jurisdiction.[45]
The chancelleries recognised that central control could not rely entirely on quarterly or annual account submissions and therefore they continued to place greater reliance on subjecting outgoing governors to end-of-term audits by their replacements. The outgoing governor was required to give his replacement full assistance in conducting a general inventory and audit. This could take many days to complete, as it involved inspections of fortifications and troops, counting and weighing cash and grain stores, examining s"ezzhaia izba logbooks and archive inventories, reviewing income and expenditure accounts and conducting interrogations into expenditures that appeared to lack authorisation from Moscow. In some cases the centre expected this audit to assess the profitability of the outgoing governor's administration compared to previous governors' terms, in which case a profit report (pribyl'naia kniga) as well as audit report had to be prepared. The outgoing governor was not allowed to depart until the chancelleries had received these audit results and ruled on whether he had to pay any fines, make restitution of missing funds, or pay any damages to local inhabitants. Fines of a hundred roubles or more were common enough; restitution of missing funds sometimes was ordered at double rate, to the total value of thousands of roubles.
44
For petitions seeking the governor's post at Pereiaslavl'-Riazan' see A. A. Kabanov, 'Akty o naznacheniii smene voevod vPereiaslavle Riazanskom', 2 pts.,
In someinstances notables appointed to hard postings-governorshipsin underdeveloped regions far off in Siberia - did receive special maintenance subsidies out of the treasury, usually in grain or spirits, but these were only in supplement to their regular service bounties.
45
P. P. Smirnov,