Novgorod Palace Ministry in the 17th century
A special place in the sphere of feudal tenure of the Russian state in the 17th century belonged to the Tsar’s domain - the tsarist household, consisting of estates in various counties. These estates were called palace estates and were in charge of court ministries. Among them, the most important were the Great Palace, as well as the “Bread” Ministry (Prikaz) and the Ministry of Secret Affairs. The activity of the Novgorod Palace Ministry in the 17th century was studied to a lesser extent. This article determines the place of the Novgorod Palace Ministry in the system of Russian central authorities in the 17th century. The historiographic basis of this article includes the works of the well-known Russian pre-revolutionary historians S. Veselovsky and A. Gnevushev, as well as the researchers of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods D. Liseytsev, N. Rogozhin, Y. Eskin, and N. Demidova. Gnevushev first raised the question of the functioning of the Novgorod Palace Ministry in the early 20th century. In 1911, he published documents on the history of the ministry, accompanied by a brief essay. A significant contribution to the study of the Novgorod Palace Ministry belongs to the contemporary researcher - D. V. Liseytsev, who studied its activities in the era of Troubles. In this article, the author analyzes the Novgorod Palace Ministry as the major component of the Russian power institution from the moment of its foundation until the late 17th century. The source base includes both published and unpublished records of management documentation of the Novgorod Palace Ministry of the 17th century. The documents were preserved in the private collection of the historian of literature, ethnographer, collector and researcher of Old Russian writing, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, E. Barsov (fund 450) in the Department of Written Sources of the State Historical Museum (Moscow), as well as in the fund № 396 of the Armory Chamber of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Moscow). All these documents represent a unique collection of original notebooks and expendable books on the issue of salaries for service, aimed “for the Tsar’s use”, as well as scripts and description books of palace towns and municipalities, peasants’ request letters for different years of the 17th century. Especially important sources include the ministry documentation published in the book “The Novgorod Palace Ministry in the 17th century” by A. Gnevushev, as well as the acts published in the “Russian Historical Library” and “Addenda to the Acts of History” in the late 19th century. The author has studied the main functions of the Novgorod Palace and defined the structure of this ministry. He has revealed the place of the Novgorod Palace Ministry in the system of the Russian power system in the 17th century. The Novgorod Palace Ministry operated extensive tsarist estates in the Veliky Novgorod District; it had economic and political independence, though it was still considered a branch of the Grand Palace Ministry.