A history of the Governing Senate on the Presidential Library website

By the 306th anniversary of the establishment by Peter I the Governing Senate, which is celebrated on March 5, 2017, the Presidential Library on its website presents the archival documents and research works of the late XIX – the early XX century related to a history of Senate, including composed by M. A. Zeil reference book of 1898 entitled The Governing Senate, the decrees and protocols of the Governing Senate and other rarities. They with meticulous precision describe a life of the institution, which fate is so closely tied to the fate of the Russian state.

“The institutions, just like people, have their own destiny, - P. Golitsyn writes in his The first century of the Senate book in 1910. – “They pass in their lives the days of glory and the periods of humiliation,” - Professor Philip, one of the few researchers of the Senate history, says. An essence of the institution becomes obvious only after we realize quite clearly a picture of its formation, its growth. This principle is the total basis for the entire period of existence, a foundation, which accompanies it during the complete subsequent history of its life.” Since the beginning of the XVIII century Boyar Duma has ceased to play a significant role in decision-making, however, remaining “an advisory” body, it still was not completely subordinated to Peter I. P. Ivanov in his book entitled The Senate under Peter the Great in 1859 issue, in particular, testified: “The judges did what they wanted, when deciding the case on their own. To put an end to this tyranny, to destroy personal prevalence, to quit a game of passion, non-sequences, oversights or excessive haste, Peter changed the whole system of public establishments; instead of the Boyar Duma, he has constituted the Senate, while in the local authorities separate judicial authority with the administrative establishing the Court Councils and the Lower Courts in the province.”

Confident of the collegial board in monarchical state as “a perfection and beyond,” Peter I ordered all new agencies a collegial organization as more equitable in its judgments and sentences. Reforming Russia in all scopes, the great monarch zealously cared of the exact fulfillment of everything what he has undertaken for the sake of the state. He personally looked after that. However, continuous wars that he for the most part personally leaded along with another urgent matters repeatedly forced him leaving the capital for a long time.

And then Peter I, going to war with Turkey, constituted “in 1711, on February 22, in Moscow, the Senate to control the state (profit and loss, trade, proceedings) during his absence.”

Senate was not concerned with military campaigns. However, from the temporary committee in 1718 it turned into a permanent supreme institution, just “like a temporary headquarters on the Neva River became the capital of the empire, like a subaltern officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment Alexander Menshikov became the Duke of Izhora,” - V. O. Klyuchevsky said in the “A History of Russia” from the Presidential Library stock. What had been needed was, the author emphasizes, a new state council with permanent staff, focused on major state affairs; an authority, “as plenipotentiary that anyone was afraid of it, but so responsible that it had something to be afraid of in turn. Tsar’s alter ego in people’s eyes.”

An oversight for all administration became the primary task of the Senate in 1711, for which an active control agency was immediately set up. “Fiscal - the eyes and ears of the Senate,” – A. P. Golitsyn comments on this in his The first century of the Senate book of 1910. By the Decree dated the 5th of March 1711 it was ordered to select the chief fiscal, a reliable man, who must secretly watch for all proceedings and report to the emperor on the unjust trials. Any city had to have one or two of insiders-fiscals, and on 340 cities there were, according to Klyuchevsky, not less than 500 of such informers. In 1714 Peter I issued a decree, in which he laid out on the sneaks a prosecutor's duty to search for the “public cases for which there is no petitioner.” Realizing all the seriousness of fiscal’s rank, he took the sneaks under his protection.

Government reforms of Peter the Great, as well as the rest of his changes, helped to move the state forward. One way or another, the Senate institution has played an important role on the political stage of the Russian Empire.

The Senate was dismissed by the Decree on the Court № 1 after the October Revolution of November 22 (December 5), 1917. From 1925 to 2005, the Russian State Historical Archive, which is based on the archives of the Senate and the Synod, was accommodated in the Senate and Synod buildings.

During World War II the building has seriously suffered being hit by eight artillery shells, the interiors were damaged - some painting and stucco survived. The restoration lasted from 1944 to 1952. In 2006, after moving the archives to new premises in Zanevsky Prospect, the Department of the Presidential Affairs has launched a complex restoration work in the Senate and the Synod architectural complex. Since 2008 the Senate building accommodates the premises of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, and since 2009 the Synod building - the premises of the Presidential Library.

Thus, as P. Golitsyn wrote, “the Senate’s history with the national history of Russia remains in an unbreakable, etiological entwining.”