Prikaz

Military government agencies in Tsardom of Russia, 16th 17th centuries

A prikaz (прика́з; , plural: ) was an administrative, judicial, territorial, or executive office functioning on behalf of palace, civil, military, or church authorities in the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Tsardom of Russia from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The term usually suggests the functionality of a modern "ministry", "office", "department", or "bureau"; however, in practice prikaz was historically applied to most governmental organizations regardless of their function or authority. In modern Russian, prikaz literally means an 'order' in the meaning of 'directive' or 'command'. Most of the prikazy were subordinated to the boyar duma. Some of them, palace prikazy (links=no), were subordinated to the taynyi prikaz or pervyi prikaz, which answered directly to the tsar of Russia. The patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' had his own prikazy.

Originally, prikazy were created by private orders given by the tsar to a certain person. The functions of the prikazy would be led by boyars and professional administrators. From 1512, the term "prikaz" started to be used to refer to offices. There were 22 prikazy (departments) in 1613, however this number would balloon to 80 by the mid 17th century.

The prikazy were abolished by Peter the Great as part of his governmental reform program and replaced them, beginning in 1717, with administrative organs known as Collegiums. This process would undergo a long span of time; the Siberian Prikaz, for example, was restored in 1730 and existed until 1755. At the beginning of the 18th century, Peter the Great even established some new prikazy. The system was only fully eliminated by Catherine the Great in 1775.

The classification of the various prikazes is a very difficult task. In fact, each major historian tries to build their own system of classification. Major variants include prikazes of a territory, of a class of population, or of an area of affairs. Another method of classification is to rank prikazes by subordination.