A study of local government raises several important questions about the nature of the imperial Russian state, the level of development of provincial Russian society and the relationship between government and society in Russia. This chapter is concerned with Russian local administration but it should be noted that different structures, different traditions and even different law codes applied in many of the non-Russian parts of the empire until well into the nineteenth century and sometimes until 1917. Local government was an issue which spawned extensive, and lengthy, legislation over the whole imperial period. The tsars, from Peter to Nicholas II, legislated at length on the structures of urban self-government and on the composition, responsibilities and privileges of the urban population. It has been seen that government hoped through legislation to 'Westernise' or modernise Russian towns by the introduction of Western-style guilds, the creation, and then re-creation, of categories of urban citizens and the development of corporate institutions.