Mandatory Instructions for Clerks of Jails and Settlements of Western Siberia at the End of the 17th -the First Half of the 18th Centuries (Based on the Analysis of the Documents Issued in Kuznetsk Uyezd)

The article is devoted to the historical and legal analysis of mandatory instructions for clerks of jails and settlements of Western Siberia at the end of the 17th - the first half of the 18th centuries. This kind of documents still requires a thorough analysis, especially taking into consideration the significant interest in the management strategies and practices of Siberian vaivodes, as well as legislative support for their activities. Mandatory instructions presented a special version of a personalized job description written in a form of a vaivode's ordinance addressed to the incoming department clerk. The structure of a mandatory instruction was divided into five blocks. The purpose of the first block was to formally fix the procedure for transferring power from the previous clerk to the current one. The second one implied the inventory of assets and items that came to the disposal of the manager. The third block determined the functional status of the clerk. The limited number of regulations of early imperial laws intended for local governments not only made it impossible to avoid the eclecticism of administrators' activities, characteristic of the documents of the 17th century, but also increased it significantly due to the syncretism of the administrative doctrine that was formed at the regional level. Regulations with guidelines on emergency measures complemented the documents. The final part of mandatory instructions contained norms that determined the range of potential offences. During the first years after the introduction of a top-down management style, clerks' punishable offences were only the surrender of fortifications and the signing of illegal agreements with autochthonous inhabitants or nomads. Later, the list of illegal acts was expanded and included trade with the aboriginal population, tax fraud, "offending" the supervised population, bribery, giving false testimony in court or inciting to it. In general, the regional legal and regulatory framework of Western Siberia at the end of the 17th and in the first half of the 18th centuries retained tangible features of continuity (it actually mechanically borrowed separate blocks from previously issued documents), yet it developed as an original one and excluded exact replications of the previous regulations. This manifested the interpenetration of the tradition and innovations of the administrative system during the first decades of building the renewed (imperial) Russian statehood when the archaic unification of strategies for the development of Siberia in the 17th century gradually lost its relevance because of the necessity to take into account individual needs of local areas.

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