Issues of organizing regional administration in the minutes of provincial and district commissars of the Provisional Government (March – October 1917)

Abstract

Ваckground. The most important phenomenon in the process of state construc-tion at the regional level in Russia in 1917 was the organization of the Institute of Provin-cial and District Commissars of the Provisional Government. The organization and activi-ties of this power institute for a hundred years has been an object of criticism in historical science, expressed in the desire of scientists to demonstrate the refusal of the Provisional Government to democratize the management system after the February Revolution. The purpose of the work is to identify problems in the organization of regional government by the Provisional Government, based on an analysis of the materials of meetings of govern-ment commissioners. Materials and methods. The implementation of research tasks was achieved by identifying documents from the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Re-gion revealing the process of convening and operating meetings of the commissars of the Provisional Government, which were in the process of developing the foundations for or-ganizing regional power. The methodological basis of the study was the historical – com-parative method, historical comparative studies and hermeneutics. Results. The factors that had a huge impact on the process of organizing the regional power of the Provisional Gov-ernment are investigated. Conclusions. An attempt was made to overcome the scientific point of view that had existed for many decades about the desire of the Provisional Gov-ernment to build an extremely centralized system of public administration at the provincial level. The desire of the Provisional Government to transfer local administrative powers to local self-government bodies and resolve the issue of legal regulation of the activities of its governmental institution in the field at meetings of the commissioners of the Provisional Government with the involvement of public representatives is justified.

Keywords

• provincial and county commissars
• temporary government
• local administration
• centralization
• democratization
• decentralization