The Concept of Public Administration by S.E. Desnitsky (Reconstruction Experience).

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S.E. Desnitsky's views on public administration occupy a special place in the history of managerial thought in Russia of the XVIII century. This place is determined by the fact that, unlike all those who wrote on management topics in that era, he was not an official. He was an observer and an expert, which gave him the opportunity to system analyze and develop a set of proposals for improving governance in Russia. The subject of the article is the set of views of S.E. Desnitsky, designated here as the "management concept". The purpose of the study is to identify the basic elements of this concept. The reference method is a combination of systematic and semantic analysis of Desnitsky's texts, in comparison with the texts of figures of the European Enlightenment. The main conclusion of the article is the complex of semantic blocks identified by the author, the combination of which makes up Desnitsky's management concept. The author comes to the conclusion that Desnitsky saw the purpose of management in introducing organizational principles into "natural" relations and, first of all, into property relations. Desnitsky supplemented the universal principle of the "common good" with the principles of the welfare of the state and estate management. To solve management problems, he proposed to follow two organizational principles: separation of powers and multi-level management. For each of the "authorities" allocated to him, he defined tasks peculiar only to her and the tools necessary for their solution. The preservation of the unity of governance in the state, according to Desnitsky, is achieved by highlighting the law as the main instrument of governance.