Role of bourgeois societies in the system of city government of Simbirsk province in the second half of the XIX century

The study of interaction between the state and society is based on the historical experience and the evolution of legal forms of implementation of power by the people. This contributes to a more detailed study of the specifics of citizens' participation in local management. The article studies the interaction of members of petty-bourgeois societies of Simbirsk with municipal authorities and their powers. It was bourgeoisie that was the second after the peasantry and the most numerous class of the cities of the Russian Empire. The author studies the aspects of independence limits of the members of bourgeois corporations, composed of municipalities. The paper studies the specifics of the local self-government bodies, the procedure and conditions for the participation of the representatives of bourgeois communities, reveales the foundations of the electoral process. The author has established the degree of control of public authorities over the activities of municipal authorities. The article contains archival documents of the state archive of the Ulyanovsk region, studies the legal norms of the city regulations of 1870 and 1892.