GOVERNOR’S POWER IN THE FINAL THIRD OF THE 19TH CENTURY (BASED ON SAMARA ARCHIVES)

Abstract

The article deals with the complex groups of archive documents, formed during the activities of the governor’s rule. A review of publications on the problems of source studies of the governor’s administration in the post reformation period is given. The author describes the type and quantity of documents, their preservation, departmental affiliation, metadata used for search, and information value. The author reveals lexical gaps in the composition of archive fonds, caused by incomplete preservation of documents. The issues of archival heuristics, i.e,. the location and ways of searching for documentary materials, were considered. The pool of documentary sources deposited in the Samara Regional Archive is characterized by systematicity; it allows to study the governor’s rule from different «angles»: staff composition, resource base, functional and informational connections, etc. An analysis of the administrative acts of the governor showed that the head of the region in his administrative function was, first of all, a «dispatcher» and controller of instructions (tasks, orders) of the central authorities. The documents issued by the governor on his own initiative made up a small (4-5%) part of the administrative documentation. The main (type-like) disadvantage of administrative documentation is depersonalization, i.e. small amount of information about the holders (subjects) of power. To minimize it, it is reasonable to use more actively the materials of governor’s correspondence, which is close to the documents of personal origin by information characteristics.

Keywords

• history of power
• governor
• retrospective documents
• historiography
• source criticism
• record keeping
• governor’s reports
• information value