20 - Local government and administration

Summary

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 corvée 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.