To the history of one text: Regulation on the administration of the Don host of the 1860s

The article is devoted to the Regulation on the administration of the Don Host of the 1860s, which is still not found by historians. It is known that in 1862-1863 the work on this document has become scandalous, since Don public figures accused the Ministry of War of reluctance to take into account the real request of the Cossacks. As a result, electoral deputies were introduced to the Don Codification Committee, which had developed the Regulation. The materials of Kh.I. Popov, one of the deputies, are stored in the State archive of the Rostov region. We’ve found manuscripts among these materials that contain criticism of the “project of basic principles of the Regulation, submitted to the deputies for consideration. We consider in detail this criticism, because it is important for the reconstruction of certain provisions of the text, submitted to the deputies. The analysis shows that the project of basic principles already had a compromise character, and did not comply with the liberal policy of the Ministry of War of the early 1860s. As a result of deputies’ meetings, additional amendments to the project were made. The resulting text was sent to St. Petersburg in early 1864. However, the imperial government did not accept this document, and the work on the drafting of the Regulation was de facto terminated. Thus, the Regulation on the administration of the Don Host is a real text-phantom, and the search for its final version seems to be meaningless. Although the work on it had been formally conducted for almost a decade, only preliminary drafts were actually created at that time, and only some editions of the project of basic principles of the Regulation can be characterized by integrity and consistency.