russia’s regional governance at the change of epochs: administrative reform drafts in the late 19th-early 20th centuries

This article addresses the long and complex process of Russia’s government working out draft reforms aimed at transforming the country’s regional governance system in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Aware of the unsatisfactory state of affairs in the area of the organization and operation of the governorate administration, the supreme state authorities initiated the development of relevant reform, looking to not only engage representatives of the local bureaucratic elite in the process but take account of public opinion in respect of the principles of the set-up and activity of the regional administration. This article demonstrates that drafts developed during the late imperial period, which persistently sought to promote the idea of strengthening the governor’s authority and uniting the major governorate collegia into a single institution, fell short of being realized. This circumstance had a negative effect on the operation of the governor’s authority, which was clearly manifested in the extremely hard conditions of the February Revolution of 1917. The weakness of governorate rulers in combination with widespread “anti-governor” sentiment locally, expressed in the form of mass arrests of functionaries by the uprisen people, forced the Provisional Government to fully renounce the existing regional governance system by revoking the governor posts and handing authority over to the chairmen of the county councils.