The Landrat in the Saint Petersburg Governorate: Officials, Functions, and Position in the System of Administration (Material for Further Research)

Abstract

The article focuses on the institution of the landrat, i.e. one of the lower levels of local self-government in Russia which briefly functioned in the country following the administrative reform of Peter I. Its inclusion in the Tsar’s design was motivated by the institution of the same name which had functioned in the Baltic provinces of Sweden, ceded to Russia after the Great Northern War. The introduction of the landrat into a purely Russian system of local government was done against the backdrop of a contradictory and normatively uncertain legal order and was sensitive to regional variation in practice. The author seeks to reconstruct the institution of the landrat in the Saint Petersburg governorate on the basis of a document he uncovered, the “Register of landrat officials and commissars of the Saint Petersburg governorate” of 1717, and from incomplete information available in several extant documents and published sources. The article offers a general assessment of the role and position of the landrat in the administrative structure of Russia during the reign of Peter I, and an attempt to collate the similarities and differences in the organisation of the Saint Petersburg and Siberia governorates. The article provides preliminary generalisations on the available material, expected to serve as a basis for a monograph on the history of the landrat in Russia more generally.