Immediate changes (1763-4) introduced vice-governors at the gubernia level and assistants to governors at lower levels. Governors' duties were defined, pensions were improved for noblemen (men could retire with halfpay after twenty-five years in service and after reaching age 50) and better salaries were set for most positions, almost doubling those that did exist. The British traveler William Coxe, writing about Catherine's judiciary in the 1790s, observed: "she has increased the salaries of the judges, who before, from the narrowness of their income, were necessarily exposed to almost irresistible temptations from bribery." At the same time aggressive corruption investigations of bureaucrats were launched and the procuracy expanded, placing an agent independent of the governor at all levels. Central oversight was strengthened by creating several Senate Departments that bypassed and undermined the Colleges. Currying noble favor, and in the long run wanting to cultivate a more energized noble estate, Catherine also reversed policy to permit noblemen to develop local roots: in 1764 and 1766 governors at all levels were allowed to buy land where they served, and in 1760 governors' terms were extended.
To create an administrative structure of units of uniform size that made sense geographically, Catherine inaugurated a major mapping and census project. As John LeDonne points out, if Catherine intended to introduce more officials and pay them more, then each region needed population sufficient to pay those salaries. Between 1764 and the implementation of the 1775 administrative reform, land surveys were undertaken that redrew the administrative map of the empire; these maps ultimately appeared in a 1792 Atlas. Many gubernii lost or gained territory at the boundaries, sometimes destroying local coherence but in many cases shaping a more sensible region according to geographical features and natural boundaries.
Even before the administrative reform (1775), new gubernii were being created as territories were added or consolidated on the borderlands. Activity was prodigious in 1764. Siberia's sole, huge gubernia at Tobolsk was divided to create a gubernia at Irkutsk. On the Black Sea steppe the military colonies of New Serbia and Slaviano-Serbia were combined into the Novorossiia gubernia. To its east Sloboda Ukraine became Kharkiv gubernia and the Left Bank Hetmanate was abolished, replaced with a governor generalship. The quasi-military form of governor-generalship also oversaw Livland, Estland, and Smolensk in the 1760s.
Catherine II's government was spurred to introduce empire-wide administrative reform in 1775 not only by Enlightenment conviction but also by social unrest and success in war. Protest had flared through the first decade of Catherine's reign— uprisings in Right Bank Ukraine, New Russia, and Zaporozhia in the late 1760s, flight of the Kalmyks in 1771, revolt among the Iaik Cossacks in 1772. In 1773-5 Bashkirs, Nogais, Iaik Cossacks, and Urals peasants rose with Emelian Pugachev in revolt, exposing the weakness of local defenses and center-periphery connections. Acquisition of new territory (the first partition of Poland, 1772; Turkish war 1768-74) also prompted administrative change. Finally, the 1762 release of the nobility from compulsory service and postwar demobilization left thousands of local noblemen in need of retirement sinecures. Responding to all these stimuli, Catherine II issued what was called the Organic Law of 1775: intended to "furnish the Empire with the institutions necessary and useful for the increase of order of every kind, and for the smooth flow of justice," the reform included elements that improved trade, communications, and tax collection; provided social welfare services; put people in closer contact with local judicial and other offices; and provided employment for local nobility.
The Organic Law increased the number of gubernii, imposed uniform size, and staffed each with the same institutions across the empire. The provincial level was abolished; gubernii and districts (uezdy) were composed of uniform population size (for the gubernia, 300,000-400,000 males, for districts 20,000-30,000 males); borders were intended to create sensible economic and geographical units that enhanced connections between center and periphery and among centers of trade and production; capital cities of gubernia and district were to be centrally located (some were relocated, many were created from modest villages). The reform abolished the centuries-old office of all-powerful governor (voevoda), replaced with a gubernia-level governor (gubernator) with somewhat less direct power. The reform reintroduced the short-lived Petrine division of powers in three hierarchies—police, judicial, and fiscal. The governor oversaw the judicial and police apparatus, but had less authority over the fiscal, which reported directly to the procurator at gubernia level and procurator-general in St. Petersburg. Furthermore, procurators were assigned in all offices, enhancing an inherent tension between the governor and the procurator-general. (A further tension was created in 1785 when the office of Marshall of the Nobility was instituted, a potential rival to local governors, but with less authority.)
At the highest level, the reform was structured around meta-units of governor- generalships (namestnichestvo). In use in border areas before 1775, these powerful military commanders oversaw two gubernii. During the reforms this structure was kept in areas (Left Bank, Novorossiia, and Orenburg) where strong authority was needed to dismantle local autonomies and/or to organize and control newly annexed lands. In central Russia as well, by the 1780s governor-generals had been appointed for every two gubernii, but here the post was more political than administrative; the appointees were Catherine's eyes and ears in the localities, asserting central oversight while gubernia governors did the work.
Staffing the new offices revealed some ofCatherine's Enlightenment convictions: she reintroduced a strong element of participation by all social classes in regional and local government, like the old Muscovite system ofselected representatives and Peter I's recruitment of local nobles into administration. These offices were integrated into the Table of Ranks with status and salary, making the reform hugely expensive for the state and a boon to the nobility, which received the majority ofthe new offices.
At the gubernia level, the governor, appointed by the Senate, ruled with a deputy governor who was primary fiscal officer and an appointed administrative board of himself, two councilors at high rank, five secretaries, the procurator, and his two deputies. Probably the central institution of the reform was the Treasury Chamber, directly responsible to the procurator-general and headed by the deputy governor and a board of five more, with a wide array of collection and administrative fiscal roles. Judiciary was also a central focus, divided by social estate. The gubernia level had an Upper Land Court with Criminal and Civil Departments; each, with six appointed noble members, heard appeals from district courts and complaints from local nobles on service-related issues. Areas settled by state peasants or ethnic groups had an upper court with appointed noble chairman and elected peasant or native assessors. Each court also had a procurator and his staff to oversee procedure and legality. Above these courts, also in gubernia capitals, were civil and criminal chambers (Palata ugolovnogo and grazhdanskogo suda) with six appointed noble members to serve as courts of appeal for all social groups; above them was the Senate with territorially defined Departments in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The reform introduced two new functions as well. The first was a Court of Equity with an appointed noble chairman who convened for each case a board of assessors elected by the social estates of the litigants. This court was intended for minor civil and criminal cases that fell outside the usual law, particularly involving minors and the insane. This body introduced something akin to the concept of habeas corpus to Russian law in allowing investigation of complaints of false arrest and imprisonment. It oversaw conflict resolution by arbitration between the parties, it addressed cases of humanitarian concern, and dealt with other cases outside normal courts, including witchcraft (treated secularly as superstition or fraud, no longer a religious crime). Also innovative was a Board of Social Welfare with elected representatives oflocal estates. Funded by the government, it operated as a sort of lending bank for major projects; it was charged with providing each town and major village with welfare services, such as primary schools; major towns were also to have hospitals; gubernia capitals were to create almshouses, workhouses, orphanages, and prisons as well.