Abstract: The article examines the degree of completeness of the source base for the study of the personal composition of elected and electors of city government bodies in European Russia in the 1700s – 1760s. The study of almost the main "actors" of elected city government - ministers and electors who nominated them to these positions – will reveal from a new perspective the principle of the formation of these institutions and their relations with the authorities, the nature of formal and informal ties within the posad, strategies of behavior of the inhabitants of the posad. The use of the prosopographic method makes it possible to identify and personalize each individual elected or elector. However, for the compilation of such "dossiers" a specific range of sources is required: clerical documentation of the Chief Magistrate, zemstvo huts, magistrates and town halls, as well as materials of 1-3 audits. Analyzing how numerous these sources are and what range of issues they can cover, the author comes to the conclusion that archival materials allow conducting a study of such a plan on the example of a large number of cities of different administrative significance. However, the degree of completeness of the source base is extremely uneven: the composition of elected and electors of city magistrates was reflected in the documents most fully, although not evenly across different cities and over different periods of time, while the composition of zemstvo huts and town halls can be found out only by indirect signs.