On the Organization of the All-Russian Inspection of the Governorates

Abstract

The inspection of local government in 1800, the largest ever conducted in Russia, is very modestly presented in historiography. On the one hand, this is due to the predominance of a negative tradition in the study of the epoch of Paul I despite the “new direction” laid down by M. V. Klochkov, on the other hand — due to the source base for studying the issue formed in the work of A. E. Nolde. It was A. E. Nolde, followed by V. N. Bochkarev, who had a decisive influence on the development of the historiography of the issue. In addition to the term “audit”, the established historiographical parameters include: limited funding, small number of participants in the inspection; uncertainty regarding the rights of senators; formal pattern of reports; the predominance of positive feedback in them in order to avoid the consequences of “hot-tempered nature of the monarch”; perfunctory, and therefore “inconclusive”, pattern of the inspection not providing the materials “for any general reform or reorganization of any parts of management”. We object to such interpretations of predecessors and to the definition of inspection as “audit”, to the issue with the initiator of the inspection, the reasons for its conducting, the time, the content of instruction. All of the above mentioned problems require further studying, and first and foremost — the text of the instructions, which is a key to their understanding. Reconsideration the biased assessments of the first and last all-Russian inspection of 1800 by extracting new information from traditional sources and introducing previously unknown archival materials into scientific circulation is an objective historiographical necessity.