New Information about Baron A. Ch. Luberas and his Role in the Collegiate Reform of Peter I

Baron Ananias Christian Pott von Luberas, who served as the vice-president of the Collegium of Mining and Manufacturing, was the author of a significant number of drafts and notes. In the historiography, his role in the collegiate reform has received controversial assessments, although most of his writings have not been the focus of research. This article is based on a wide range of archival sources from the funds of AFPRE (AVPRI), RSAAA (RGADA), and DM RSL (OR RGB). The author managed to identify new documents that contain previously unknown facts about the biography of Luberas. A textual analysis of the identified copies of his works enables the author to conclude that his projects were translated only in the mid-1770s. A comparative analysis of the legislation of the Petrine era and Luberas’ projects shows that his ideas influenced the establishment of systems for collegiate paperwork and for relationships between collegia and other institutions, rather than the drawing up of the regulations of Peter’s collegia. There is no reason to either deny the influence of the baron’s ideas on the reforms of Peter I or to consider it as being overly significant, since there are no documents about the discussion of Luberas’ writings in the Senate, collegia, commissions, and generally among political elites. At the same time, these works are interesting not only in connection with discussions about the influence of foreign experience on the reforms of Peter I, but also in the context of the history of social thought in Russia. The quite voluminous discourses by Luberas contain many ideas, which, although never realised in Peter’s time, became relevant later. Thus, his notes and projects expand established ideas about the history of statistics in Russia. The paper demonstrates that the main issue Luberas focused on was the organisation of accounting and the collection of statistical information

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