| Summary: | During Russia`s capitalist modernization in the second half of the nineteenth century, guberniia and uezd officialdom acted as an intermediary between the top echelons of power and the people, bringing the legislature to the latter and adapting it to local conditions. At the same time, bourgeois reforms created a “modern” official who was to represent the looming rule of law state (pravomernoe gosudarstvo). A modernizing Russian society demanded an updated administration. The transformation of the corrupt, poorly-educated, and socially self-contained pre-reform Russian provincial officialdom into a modern Weberian rational bureaucracy was never completed in the imperial period. It naturally took time and effort for the bureaucracy to slowly divest itself of many of these earlier flaws. Still, a number of significant changes occurred, including an end to estate limitations, a growth in professionalization and specialization of provincial Crown officials, and shifts in the socio-cultural values and needs of the officialdom.
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