“A CONFUSION IN THE CITY”: A CONFLICT BETWEEN THE GOVERNOR AND THE COMMUNAL ELDER IN SUZDAL, 1666–1667

The article presents a detailed account of a bright episode from the history of Suzdal in the 1660s, namely a conflict between the town governor Prince Fedor Bariatinskii and the communal elder (zemskii starosta) Sergei Pigasov, followed by the investigation in the Chancellery of Military Affairs in Moscow. The original materials of the Pigasov case, along with some other documents, reveal that the conflict stemmed from a confrontation between the two branches of local power: the gubernatorial and the communal. Another source of internal instability was the rivalry of oligarchic clans, one of which was the Pigasovs. The analyzed documents of 1666–1668 cast some light on this underexplored phenomenon. The Pigasov case also graphically demonstrates the costs of Muscovite centralization. In the face of a shortage of personnel and the lack of independent information channels the control of the Moscow-based bureaucracy over the local administration remained ineffective, while an attempt of the Chancellery of Military Affairs to investigate the facts of corruption on the part of the Suzdal governor and his employees ended in predictable failure.