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III Отделение и надзор за губернской администрацией: случай губернатора И.Д. Талызина
The aim of presented article is to examine the mechanism of control of the Third section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery over the highest provincial bureaucracy during the Nicholas I era. The career of Ivan Talysin (1799-1844), who served in the 1830s-1840s as civil governor in Tobolsk and Orenburg was taken as an example. The article questions several topics: what information did the Third section possess on the state of the provincial government; how did the Third section intervene in the personnel policy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other central departments; what was the practice of interaction between the Third section and the ministries in the framework of supervision over the provincial administration. In this methodological approach the author relies on the tradition of the institutional theory in the field of historical sociology. It was noted that the emerging of professional bureaucracy within the absolutist state led to the formation of an independent "monarch's institution" and "agents" of the supreme authority caused by the monarch's intention to retain power. The activities of the Third section and gendarme officers in the province are regarded as directly representing the imperial will in public administration. The article is based on official records from the archives of the Third section (State Archives of the Russian Federation) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russian State Historical Archive). In the course of the study, the following conclusions were made. The establishment of the Third section in 1826 was caused by the intention of the monarch to set a constant supervision over the central and local bureaucracy. The Third section collected regular reports of gendarmerie officers with characteristics of local officials, various denunciations were sent to provincial gendarmes for verification. Gendarmerie officers were deprived of the right to make inquiries in the documents of provincial agencies, their reports were based on information from their confidants and rumors and were not confirmed by official documents. The whole system of supervision ascended to the monarch, and the reports of the secret police provided him with an alternative source of information on the state of affairs in the provincial government and allowed to make decisions in the circumvention of the ministers. Gendarmerie control over provincial administration was not legislated, but by the end of the 1830s was tightly integrated into the public administration. The gradual consolidation of central government agencies narrowed the space for regular gendarmerie control.