Legal regulation of state financial control in the Russian Empire of the second half of the XIX century – the beginning of the XX century

Abstract

Problem setting. At present, the Institute of Public Financial Control is one of the main mechanisms for implementing financial and legal policy in Ukraine. At the same time, many questions regarding the legal and organizational support of the Institute, both in theory and in practice, have not yet been finally resolved and need further improvement. Since the 90’s of the twentieth century. Ukraine has started the transition to market relations. Financial and control bodies began to emerge, which appeared most often spontaneously in the state mechanism and were not brought into a single system, which was facilitated by the imperfect legal system. Therefore, it is no coincidence that their work today lacks proper coordination and coherence, and there is a clear and hidden duplication of functions, which leads to numerous abuses in the sphere of financial activity.

Analysis of recent researches. Issues related to the formation and development of public financial control in the Russian Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century – beginning of the twentieth century, нave been the subject of scientific research of such scientists as: I.I. Blech, I.S. Blich, F.I. Bochkovsky, V.O. Tatarinov and others.

Article’s main body. Pre-revolutionary historiography is rich in studies that have covered various aspects of financial policy, analyzed issues of budget, credit, taxation, including public financial control. In the pre-revolutionary period, neither the law nor the scientific literature used the term “state financial control”; instead, it used the term “state control”, which meant the procedure for verifying the execution of a decision made by anybody, or for the purpose of verification, and also the institution that conducted the audit. In the history of the Russian Empire in the 1960s, it was a time of transition to a new economic formation, the beginning of civil society formation and the transformation of state-legal institutions. This transition has undergone a number of transformations, including financial control reform, which has been of great importance for the development of the institution of public financial control.

Conclusions and prospects for the development. From the 60’s of the XIX century and up to the end of the century in the Russian Empire observed: improvement of the legal framework of the system of state financial control; strengthening the position of the State Control as an independent body of financial control in the state mechanism; trend of decentralization of state financial control, development of previous financial control; putting in place the elements of publicity in the activities of financial control bodies.