Pestel, Boris Vladimirovich

Boris Vladimirovich Pestel - Moscow post director , current state adviser .

By its origin, the Saxon, son of Wolfgang Pestel (1696-1763). In 1757 he graduated from the Land Shlyakhetsky Corps and entered the service of a lieutenant of 4 companies of the 1st Musketeer Regiment. In 1760, in the battle of Frankfurt, he was seriously wounded, was forced to leave military service and, with the rank of college assessor, was assigned to the Siberian order in Moscow. After the death of his father in 1763, he assumed the post of post director ^[1] . For special work at the postal department, Pestel was promoted to the office of advisers on June 9, 1770.

While in Moscow during the plague that raged there in 1771, Pestel took very successful measures to protect the postal yard from her. He forbade the entrance to the building itself, and established the reception of letters so that they would be fumigated at the gate, and then brought up to the window on which there were two pots of vinegar: they dipped letters in one, and the money followed for sending the letter was lowered. Postmen, delivering letters, passed them through special black veschanki. Everywhere in the post office letters were fumigated with vinegar, juniper berries, tar, etc. These measures proved to be very useful. Probably, for this he was honored to receive on September 29, 1775 in the Belorussian province in Sebezh uyezd, in various small villages 454 the souls of peasants, who then passed on to his son Ivan Borisovich .

He held the post of post-director until the end of his service, being in 1782 promoted to the rank of state councilor. When Count A.A. Bezborodko was named the chief director of post offices, he found the post office in unsatisfactory condition, according to the report of the Moscow post director Pestel, and instructed him in 1787 to audit postal stations from Moscow to Smolensk and to Riga. According to the audit of this, all the mailing places were found by Pestel in the most upset position.

The vastness of postal management classes in such a significant state indicated the need to distinguish this office from the work of the College of Foreign Affairs . For this revision, Pestel was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir of the 3rd degree (in 1788) and shortly afterwards (October 3, 1789) left the service with the rank of full state adviser; in his place, the Moscow post-director was appointed his son Ivan Borisovich, who had previously been his assistant.