Using the topographical approach, the author studies the development peculiarities of rural bureaucracy in the Soviet and post-Soviet society. The article focuses on the social structure of bureaucracy, the functions and means of recruiting. The rural bureaucracy's typological peculiarity whose characteristic feature is its close connection to the rural community and its integration into it is being gradually lost at the moment. The logic of the present-day reform of the local authorities testifies to the isolation of ruling structures and the merging of rural bureaucracy with provincial bureaucracy.