The Barnaul County Administrative Committee as part of the local economy management in Tomsk Province at the beginning of the 20th century

The purpose of the article is to study the activities of the county administrative committees and their relations with the provincial government. These processes were the main factors in the functioning of the local economy in the province. In particular, the author examined the work of the Barnaul County Administrative Committee. The study has benefited from archival materials of office-work nature. The author shows that the Committee did not have a stable composition. As a rule, from one to five peasant heads, tax inspectors and other officials of the county took part in the meetings. Representatives of all counties of the county attended the Committee meetings, devoted to drawing up a schedule for the correction of natural duties for the triennium. The article describes the Committee's attempts to maintain the relevance of this schedule, but the new layout was not introduced every three years. This irregularity was caused by the disagreement of the Tomsk provincial government with the provisions fixed in this document. Thereby, the schedule, compiled for three years, operated for four, five and even seven years. The ordinary activities of the Committee were the consideration of requests and petitions from rural communities and officials of the county. In some cases, the Committee itself went with petitions to the Tomsk provincial government. A common practice for the Committee was to review and approve the estimates for the construction of bridges. The author pays special attention to the attempts of the Committee to attract the urban population and the Main Directorate of the Altai District to carry out local duties. One of the discussions between the Barnaul County Administrative Committee and the Tomsk provincial government went beyond correspondence between these institutions. Peasant head A.P. Strohlman appealed to the governor with a complaint about the cancellation by the provincial administration of the resolution of the Committee, organized the filing of complaints on behalf of rural societies to the Minister of Internal Affairs. The author believes that the proposals of the Committee or its individual members were reduced to a more even distribution of duties among the population of the county. There were also contradictions within the Administrative Committee, which sometimes went beyond it. The author comes to a conclusion that the clash of opinions, attempts to introduce innovations into the organization of local economy indicate the initiative of this institution. However, the initiatives of the County Administrative Committee, in many cases, broke up by the conservatism of the provincial government, bound by strict legislative norms.

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