Naval Staffs - (Shtaby Morskie) 

An administrative office was established in 1821 for the chief of the naval affairs staff [upravlenie nachal’nika shtaba po morskoi chasti], and at the end of 1828 a naval staff was established for His Imperial Majesty [morskoi shtab Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva], renamed as H.I.M.’s Main Naval Staff [glavnyi morskoi shtab E.I.V.] in 1831. The chief of H.I.M’s Main Naval Staff controlled all naval affairs in Russia. Currently the Main Naval Staff consists of the general-admiral (1), the director of the Ministry of the Navy, the director of the inspection department, the director of the Corps of Navy Navigators, the inspector of the Corps of Ship Engineers, the inspector of the Corps of Engineers for Naval Construction, and His Majesty’s squadron-major [general-admiral, upravlyayushchii morskim ministerstvom, direktor inspektorskago departamenta, direktor korpusa flotskikh shturmanov, inspektor korpusa korabel’nykh inzhenerov, inspektor korpusa inzhenerov morskoi stroitel’noi chasti i eskadr-maior Ego Velichestva]. (See the article Ministry of the Navy.) In that same year of 1831 the Staff for the Black Sea Fleet and Ports was established. Additionally, there are staffs for chief commanders of ports: Kronstadt, Reval, Sveaborg, and the port of the Caspian Flotilla; for port commanders: Archangel, Astrakhan, the port of the Eastern Ocean, and Sevastopol. There are also staffs for the commanders of fleet divisions: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the Baltic Fleet. There are staffs for brigade commanders, three in each division, and lastly there are staffs for inspectors and others.

(From Voenno-Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar', 1854.)

Notes by the translator:
(1) "General-Admiral" was the title of Prince Aleksandr Sergeevich Menshikov, who started his career as an army officer. In time he was made the governor of Finland as well as the head of the navy,  headed diplomatic missions, and in the Crimean War he had command over both land and sea forces in the Crimea.

Translated by Mark Conrad, 1996.