Commission as an Extraordinary Form of Management in the Russian Empire (a Crimean Version)

Abstract

This article considers the history of conflict resolution between different classes of the Taurida population between the late eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth centuries. The contentions arose because of land redistribution after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire. Another purpose of this article is to consider the history of the Commission as a specific institution of state power, which was created to solve the most difficult problems of public administration. In this study, the author proposes a new approach to assessing the activities of land commissions that operated in Crimea. The author concludes that there was a unique situation in Taurida, where traditional levers of checks and balances existing in most regions of the Russian Empire did not work. Consequently, the local population classes protected their interests at all costs. It led to the collapse of the regional administrative system. The commissions were engaged in solving this problem in 1802–1810 and 1816–1819. These institutions established a direct dialogue between the centre and the participants of the conflicts, avoiding the bureaucratic system that was quite often a part of the conflict. The success of the commissions directly depended on its personnel. The personal strategies and motivations of the commission members were crucial because their opinion was decisive. The main task of the commissions was to ensure order and mutual understanding between different groups of the population but not to make fair decisions. The Crimean Tatars, nobility, and bureaucracy participated in the conflicts. The centre had to balance between their interests, which influenced the decisions made. Frequently, they tried to freeze conflicts and leave their solution for the future. It often happened when disputes concerned the local bureaucracy and the most prominent representatives of the nobility. The research methods rely on the general historical principles of academic objectivity and consistency. The article refers to archival materials from the collections of the Russian State Historical Archive and the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea.