The Issue of Provisioning Garrisons of Regular Troops in Southern Western Siberia in Correspondence of Military, Mining, and Civil Authorities of the Region in the mid-18th Century

Abstract

Intensive transformations in the administrative environment in the South Siberian outskirts during the second third of the 18th century led to the emergence of a special kind of communication, namely, intersectoral. The problem of provisions supply delivery for the regular forces in the south of Western Siberia in the regional and local administrative discourse of military-departmental, mining, and civil authorities in the middle of the 18th century is considered in the paper. The author analyzes the office documentation which was one of the key channels for the implementation and reflection of administrative interactions between various verticals of power in the early Imperial period. Intersectoral communication at the regional level was largely open while at the local level there had been attempts to limit it deliberately. It is shown that the development of a renovated model, algorithms for the procurement and food supply for military teams took place during the official correspondence of 1747–1749, when the structures of the three branches of government had significantly different positions. The circumstances of discussing the food supply issue in the power discourse revealed in the article indicate that there were tangible manifestations of competition between civil and departmental authorities in the regional and local administrative system of the middle of the 18th century.