The operational principles of the heraldmaster’s office in the 1720s

Abstract. This paper e examines the activities of the Heraldmaster’s Office, an institution established by Peter the Great in 1721 under the Governing Senate to keep records of the service class people. Primary attention is paid to identifying the internal organizational factors that influenced its performance. These include material support, personnel, the distribution of authority among employees, and the volume and nature of cases handled. The aim of the study is to examine the key elements influencing administrative effectiveness during Peter the Great’s reign, using the example of one of the central institutions. The research source base consists of little-studied records from the Heraldmaster’s Office. It is suggested that the identified problems were not unique to the Heraldmaster’s Office, and might characterize the entire Peterine state system. They were caused, first of all, by the discrepancy between the ambitious tasks set by Peter I for the new institutions and the conditions in which they were supposed to function. They were caused, first of all, by the discrepancy between the ambitious tasks Tsar set for the new institutions and the conditions under which they were required to operate.

Keywords: Peter the Great, Heraldmaster’s Office, history of Government, Russia in the XVIII Century, Russian bureaucracy, service class people.