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«Пришед в ту ратушу, уграживали оных купцов побоем»: стратегии и практики выборной борьбы в городских магистратах европейской части России 1720–1770-х гг.
This study focuses on the strategies and practices of the posad population employed during electoral conflicts that arose during the formation of city magistrates. The election documents of city magistrates—denunciations and petitions—reflect a wide range of electoral struggle methods, from direct physical violence, threats, and coercion to the complex manipulation of the interests of a wide range of state institutions. The study demonstrates how the specific skills of merchants, associated with trade activities and posad services, influenced their strategies and methods of electoral struggle. The article presents examples of the use of extensive family, business, and personal connections during magistrate elections, where relatives, employees, and associates not only ensured a higher number of votes for the elected official but sometimes helped exert pressure on the elected posad assembly. Even the very language of denunciations and petitions, used as instruments in electoral conflicts, is subordinated to the pragmatics of electoral struggle: posad residents communicated to the Chief Magistrate about themselves and their interests, or about oppressions and grievances, only within the framework of the ruthless logic of the state. Threats to the well-being, health, and even life of a tradesman are significant primarily because they can harm the state's financial interests if the aggrieved merchant "falls short of paying taxes." This brutal pragmatism often coexists with the highly emotional intensity of the conflict, expressed both in scathing descriptions of opponents and in brutal violence at and outside of tradesman's meetings. Research into the strategies and practices of the struggle for magistrate positions allows us to identify the specific characteristics of individual groups in tradesman society and their worldviews.