Alexander II

The article addresses one of the problems of the administrative history of palace towns of the mid-19 th century. The author notes that these settlements had a special status in the Russian Empire. They were under the jurisdiction of special institutions of the Ministry of the Imperial Court — palace boards, being largely outside the general system of public administration and local self-government. This special status gave them a certain independence and even the opportunity to engage in some opposition when deciding on the applicability of certain administrative innovations. As noted in the article, this observation also applies to the issue of introducing the institution of forensic investigators. In a significant part of the provinces they began their work soon after the signing of the corresponding decree in the early summer of 1860. The author draws attention to the fact that in the palace towns only in August the question was raised about the possibility of these officials acting on their territory. As the article notes, representatives of the local administration of Peterhof were somewhat enthusiastic about the idea of outsourcing some of the work that fell to the city police, which was considered overloaded. At the same time, the boundaries of the participation of judicial investigators in the proceedings were also specified. In Tsarskoe Selo the situation was different. Despite the declared readiness to transfer the investigative work, officials of the Tsarskoye Selo city police, under various organizational and bureaucratic pretexts, delayed this process. The author notes that in the end, to resolve this issue, the intervention of the St. Petersburg provincial government was required. The latter had to issue an order with direct reference to the imperial decree on the transfer of cases subject to criminal proceedings to a judicial investigator.