Siberian Garrison" officers in the middle of the 1780s

The article is devoted to studying the officer corps' personnel of the Siberian garrison units in the 1780s, which has not been an object for special analysis till nowadays. The author used the so-called "officers' tales", records of services from the Russian State Military History Archive funds to achieve his goal. The study is based on the data for year 1784, including the officers' corps of nine garrison infantry battalions stationed in Western Siberia. These records of services contain information about the social origin, career stages, battle experience and disciplinary indexes of Siberian garrison battalions' officers. The analysis of this information allowed making some general conclusions on what kind of people had been conducting military service in the eastern regions of the Russian Empire, and what differences could be found in comparison of Siberian battalions with any other units of the Russian Army. After working with archive materials the author came to a conclusion that the officers' corps of Siberian garrison battalions were clearly different from other army units by the end of the 18 th century in the parameters mentioned above. People from non-privileged social groups significantly prevailed among the officers, the material welfare level was quite low even for the nobles, promotion was really slow - all these causes made military service in Siberia unattractive. On the other hand, there was a considerable number of people with battle experience, which proves that the supreme power continued its previous policy of recruiting officers from field units to the Siberian garrison battalions. Some of them took part in the suppression of Pugachev's rebellion in the past. But painfully high indexes of crimes and violation of laws give evidence that the state of affairs for Siberian battalions' officers, both in their duty status and in daily routine, turned out to be unfortunate. The need for supervising the officers' financial and economic activities, as well as holding them back from hard treatment to their subordinates and civilian population, is shown quite clearly from the sources, which the author has been studying. This topic also proves that now it is time to research specifically the place and role of military servicemen in the life of the 18th-century Russian Empire. It is quite obvious that in order to carry out such work particular sources must be used where information about individuals engaged in military service can be found.

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