The article examines the anniversary historical narrative about the Decembrist revolt, presented on the pages of the scientific journals of the 1920s. An analysis of the topics of research and the nature of scientific discussions made it possible to see that historians turned to many unstudied subjects, but were unable to contrast the pre-revolutionary “legends” with a new coherent concept of Decembrism. The formation of the historical narrative was influenced by the coexistence of different generations of scientists. Marxist historians supported the ideologically correct theory of Pokrovsky, studied the Southern Society, the Society of the United Slavs and Chernigov Regiment revolt, and “bourgeois” researchers, who did not move away from “liberal concepts”, continued to focus on studying the Northern Society and the revolt on December 14th.

The article examines the informal practices of relations between representatives of the state apparatus and of the business sphere. The study is based on a complex of letters of the Buldakov merchant family. Contents of letters from provincial officials to the chief director of the Russian-American company M.M. Buldakov to see how communication developed between business and government, also allowed to highlight the typical behavior of different categories of officials. The article examines examples of establishing trusting relationships and confrontation. The conclusion is drawn that bribes and monetary rewards for services could not always ensure the loyalty of officials. An important role in the system of informal relations was played by the development of patron-client ties.

The article is devoted to the organization of tsar Nicholas I’s trip through Russia and its influence on the activities of provincial officials. The article focuses on the activity of local administrations during preparation processes for the arrival of the emperor. The provincial authorities had always reacted immediately to the news of an upcoming trip. Among priority tasks there were road and bridge maintenance, preparing post stations and horses, city beautifications, and restoring order to government offices. An urge to ready a decent reception and to represent a province in a best way had a favorable effect on the state of local government, it accumulated activities of officials and also made them to remember their duties and, at least by what it looked like, put in order territories which they were to oversee. At the same time, an excessive zeal of certain officials and the desire to please the emperor often turned into an abuse of power.

The article is devoted to the institutional control of the local government, which was improved in the XIX century. The analysis of revision procedures in four ministries (of inner affairs, state property, finance and justice) allowed to highlight common features and characteristics of the revision practices under Nicholas I. Ministry revisions were one of the form of extraordinary control, but they, instead of senatorial revisions, were used not only when central government in the capital received information about disorders in a work of local institutions, but also in order to collect reliable data on state of subordinate institutions. Such measures allowed to swiftly react on malfunctions in a work of local government and take measures “for possible improvements”, which was manifested not only in strengthening reporting practices and prosecutions, but also in adjustments of reforms and reorganization of institution work.