The Reketmeister: Russia's Eighteenth-Century Petitions Chancery

• In Event: Appealing to the Tsar: Petitioning and Advocacy in Imperial Russia

Abstract

A “Petitions Chancery” dedicated to accepting petitions to the monarch is cited off and on in the Russian bureaucracy from the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth century, the role of accepting petitions to the ruler was given to the “Reketmeister.” But we should ask why such a position was still needed, long after Russia’s European peers had folded petitions to the monarch into judicial appeals and pardons. Eighteenth-century rulers constantly complained about petitioners inundating them with requests; the Reketmeister’s office was an attempt to create an orderly process of petitioning. Nevertheless, it failed to do so, appearing and disappearing through the century. We explore its history and the question of why Russia’s rulers persisted in personally performing what might seem an anachronistic interaction with their subjects.

Author

• Nancy S. Kollmann, Stanford U