Reconciliation under Catherine II

In the XII-XVI centuries, the governor was called the official who headed the local government and exercised power in the territory under his jurisdiction on behalf of the prince. Vicarities were abolished under Ivan the Terrible as a result of reforms carried out by the Elected Rada . Meanwhile, the very concept of "governorship" did not cease to exist: in historical documents governors are noted before the beginning of the 20th century. However, this concept in various historical epochs was filled with fundamentally different contents. Under Catherine II, from 1775 to 1797, governorate was an administrative-territorial unit consisting of two or three provinces, which were governed by the governor. In the 19th century, governorate turned into a system of managing the national outskirts ( Kingdom of Poland , the Caucasus ) ^[1] .

At the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, vicegerency turned from a post into a title associated with diplomatic practice. Books of viceroyal titles of the XVII century. reflected the fact of the division of all titles into boyar and devious. Boyar governors in order from highest to lowest were placed in the first section of any book on viceroyalty. In 1665 (the middle and heyday of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich ), the following governorates belonged to them ^[1] :

The mural filed in March 1680 by Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich by the Duma clerk Larion Ivanov divided all governorates, as opposed to the previously existing boyars and devious ones, into “power great kingdoms, states, lands and cities of great reign” and “cities beyond power”, that is, they were not as such. Among the "power" were assigned 23 governor titles, arranged in the following order:

All these governorates belonged earlier to the boyars. On March 8, 1697, the Pskov governor Kravchev K. A. Naryshkin was awarded the title of governor of Vladimir, who had never before been assigned to governors ^[1] .

The governors of Vladimir in the pre-Petrine era were the boyar Prince Fyodor Ivanovich Mstislavsky , the boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov (held in murals as Vladimir governor in March 7162 (1654)), with Fedor Alekseevich - the boyar Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky (from August 15, 7187 (1679) ) ^[1] .

In the Petrine era, in March 1697, the title of viceroy of Vladimir was assigned to a relative of the king on the maternal side, Kravchev Kirill Alekseevich Naryshkin, when he was appointed governor of Pskov ^[1] .

In the 1770s, under the leadership of Empress Catherine II , a reform of local self-government was carried out. A special commission, which included such prominent figures of the Catherine era, as Yakov Efimovich Sivers , Alexander Alekseevich Vyazemsky , Petr Vasilievich Zavadovsky and others, developed an act called "Institutions for the Governance of the Provinces of the All-Russian Empire", which provided for the formation of governorships ^[2] . 28 chapters of this document were approved on November 7, 1775, and the last three in 1780. According to the "Institution ..." each of the metropolitan provinces was headed by the Governor General. Two or three provincial provinces were united in governorate ^[3] .

The opening of the viceroyal boards was held solemnly and magnificently in all provinces. A model was the opening of the first governorates - Tverskoy and Smolensk . The opening of new governorates included several stages: 1) preliminary events, 2) preparation for the opening, 3) opening of the governorship, 4) opening of counties ^[2] .

The supreme power in the governorate was possessed by the governor general (“sovereign governor”), who, as a rule, managed several governorates (usually two) and was not so much involved in specific work in managing provinces as he exercised general political leadership. A governor of governorship or a governor was appointed to each governorship (in some sources, the governor is used as the name of the position), who was engaged in the economic and financial affairs of the province.

Most modern scholars do not distinguish between provinces and governorates under Catherine II. In a number of documents, including official decrees, from the time of her reign, the terms “province” and “governorate” are used as synonyms to refer to these administrative-territorial units. The differences between the provinces and governorates under Catherine II are mainly in the features of administrative management.

Some researchers, based on an analysis of the territorial emblems, believe that governorate constituted an administrative superstructure over the province with the aim of controlling the center of local authority. ^[4] These researchers believe that in Central Russia the homonymous governorates and provinces often coincided geographically or almost coincided, but on the outskirts and sparsely populated areas of Siberia and the Far East, differences could be significant.

• List of governorates of the Russian Empire
• Governor General
• Regional reform of Catherine II

• Tarkhov S. A. Change in the administrative-territorial division of Russia over the past 300 years // Geography, No. 15/2001. - Publishing House "The First of September"
• Khitrov D.A. Electronic maps of the administrative-territorial division of Russia on the eve and after the provincial reform of 1775: on the compilation method // Rus, Russia. The Middle Ages and the New Age. Vol. 3.M., 2013.