Features of Elections and the Formation of Representative Meetings in the Cities of the Tobolsk Province on the Reform of 1892

For the first time with the involvement of archival sources, the article examined the results of elections to representative meetings (city councils, meetings of commissioners) of cities of the Tobolsk province on the reform of 1892, indicating the level of electoral activity of voters.It is estimated that in general, less than 1 % of city residents were granted the right to vote in local elections due to various kinds of censors, and less than 33 % of voters took part in the elections directly.Difficulties in organizing elections, their correct conduct and approval of the results were noted in all cities of the province.In fact, every election was accompanied by various violations and protracted scandals, which led to additional checks by the provincial authorities and the police, re-leaving the electoral lists, canceling the results and calling new elections, thereby delaying the process of forming local self-government bodies.It was established that at the level of individual cities, the process of electing vowel city meetings both by objective and subjective factors had its own specifics: participation in elections by proxy of persons without personal qualification, as well as the participation of institutions, firms and enterprises.Under the 1892 law, local elections were held 6 times.In the local thoughts of Tyumen, Tobolsk and Kurgan, large entrepreneurs and industrialists of the region prevailed, in small towns -bourgeois as small traders and artisans.The vowel re-election rate averaged 60 %.Representative meetings "turned" into an elitist authority, inaccessible to most of the population of Siberian cities.