Prikaz
administrative office in Muscovite Russia
A prikaz (Russian: прика́з; IPA: [prʲɪˈkas] , plural: prikazy) 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 (Russian: дворцовые приказы, romanized: dvortsovyje prikazy), 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.
History
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.
“Prikaz” enters the record as administrative office in Muscovite Russia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Prikaz, administrative and office can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prikaz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.