Alexander III & The State Council: Bureaucracy & Counter Reform In Late Imperial Russia 0813509424, 9780813509426

Table of contents :
Contents
Tables
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Tsar and Council
1. The Autocratic Heritage
2. The Council: Structure and Role in Government
3. The Kitchen Cabinet: Pobedonostsev, Tolstoi, Katkov, and Meshcherskii
Part II. The Bureaucratic Curse
4. Rechtsstaat and Reform
5. Castor Oil and Windbag Lawyers
Part III. Alexander's Attempts to Remake the Council
6. The President and the State Secretary
7. Bureaucratic Intransigence
8. A Social Profile of the Membership
Part IV. The Counter-Reforms
9. Law
10. And Order
11. And More Order
Conclusion
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 1 2
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 11
Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary
Reference Works
Journals and Newspapers
Index

Citation preview

A lexander

&

THE S tate C ouncil

hi

A lexander iii &

THE S tate C ouncil BUREAUCRACY & COUNTER-REFORM IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA

H eide W. W helan R u tg e r s U n iv e r s ity P ress N ew Brunswick, N ew Jersey

Library o f Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Whelan, Heide W., 1942— Alexander III and the State Council. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Soviet Union—Politics and government—19th cen­ tury. 2. Russia. GosudarstvennyT Soviet. 3. Alexander III, Emperor of Russia, 1845—1894. 4 - Bureaucracy— Soviet Union—History. I. Title. JN6540.W47 354.4701'09 ISBN O—8135—O942 —4

81-17828 AACR2

Copyright © 1982 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

To the memory of my parents Arthur and Irmgard Wölker

Contents L ist of Tables A cknowledgments A bbreviations I ntroduction Part i : T sar and Council

ix xi xii i

Chapter 1: The AutocraticHeritage Chapter 2: The Council: Structure & Role inGovernment Chapter 3: The Kitchen Cabinet: Pobedonostsev, Tolstoi, Katkov,8c Meshcherskii Part

ii :

h i:

iv :

Rechtsstaat 8c Reform Castor Oil 8c Windbag Lawyers

A lexander’s A ttempts

Chapter 6: Chapter 7: Chapter 8: Part

38 59

T he B ureaucratic C urse

Chapter 4: Chapter 5: Part

17

to

Remake

the

C ouncil

The President 8c the State Secretary Bureaucratic Intransigence A Social Profile of the Membership

T he C ounter -R eforms Chapter 9: Law Chapter 10: And Order Chapter 11: And More Order

Conclusion N otes Selected B ibliography I ndex

83 98 107 122 138 159 171 189 197 207 239 253

Tables 1. Council Work Load 2. Characteristics of Department Members 3. Chairmen of State Council Departments during the Reign of Alexander III 4. Education of Alexander I ll’s Appointees to State Council 5. Education of Nicholas II’s Appointees to State Council 6. Education of State Council Personnel, 1897 7. Prior Service of Alexander I ll’s Council Appointees 8. Entry into Service of Alexander I ll’s Appointees to State Council 9. Year of Entry of State Council Personnel in 1903 10. Landholdings of 1887 Membership of State Council in Desiatina

44 124 125 141 143 143 144 144 145 151

Acknowledgments I owe thanks to many people and institutions who gave me as­ sistance throughout the course of this work. The International Re­ search and Exchanges Board (IREX) enabled me to do research in the Soviet Union. Dartmouth College, through its Research Committee and fellowship funds, and the Russian Research Center at Harvard University both provided invaluable institutional support for the re­ search needs of the project. Very special thanks are due my Soviet adviser, Petr Andreevich Zaionchkovskii, who unstintingly gave me guidance and encourage­ ment during my stays in Moscow. Many other scholars aided me with their advice and discussion while the book was in progress. Particular gratitude is owed Richard Wortman and John M. Thompson, who never failed in their patient support and advice. Elke W. Diener, Gregory Guroff, Richard Hellie, Arcadius Kahan, Jacob Kipp, Bruce Lincoln, Walter M. Pintner, S. Frederick Starr, Theodore Taranovski, Hans-Joachim Torke, George Yaney, and my colleague at Dartmouth, Charles T. Wood, have all helped in ways I cannot adequately ac­ knowledge by this brief mention. I must stress that responsibility for any lapses and failures of the final version is solely mine. I owe a special debt to Patricia Carter of Dartmouth interlibrary loan, whose success in locating sources was nothing short of mirac­ ulous, and to Gail Patten, who was as patient with my many successive drafts as she was effective in producing from them a readable type­ script. My final and continuing thanks go to Dennis, Devin, and Lara, whose patience is simply beyond description.

Abbreviations Otdel rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi biblioteki SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina Gos. sovet Gosudarstvennyi sovet. 1801—1901 Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii PSZRI TsGAOR Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii TsGIAL Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Leningrada ORGBL

All dates follow the Julian calendar, which in the nineteenth cen­ tury ran twelve days behind the Gregorian. The transliteration of Russian terms and names follows the modified Library of Congress system, except for Chernyshevsky, Speransky, and Dostoevsky, whose names are familiar to the English-speaking world in another trans­ literation. Unless otherwise specified, all translations are my own.

Introduction he period of the counter-reforms in the 1880s and early 1890s marks a crucial period in the evolution of Russian governmental and social organization. Twenty years earlier, at the beginning of the period of the Great Reforms, there had been a broad consensus in government and society that Russia should move toward new modes of social organization. Over the next two decades, there developed within the government an increasing polarization of thought on this issue. One group came increasingly to believe that the new measures of social and administrative reorganization required for their effec­ tive implementation some measure of simultaneous political reorga­ nization. In the view of this group, some integration of educated so­ ciety (obshchestvo) into the workings of government was necessary to safeguard basic domestic tranquillity and further economic progress. Others, in contrast, felt that entirely too much reorganization had al­ ready been effected and that the main task before the nation was not an extension of the reforms, but rather a wholesale reassertion of tra­ ditional modes and procedures of governmental operation. In this view, powers that had too quickly been ceded should now be reclaimed for central authorities. This second group, whose proposals came to be known as the counter-reforms, had the full support of Alexander III, who came to the throne in 1881 and reigned until 1894. Because of their association with the tsar, the counter-reformers constituted the single most powerful and influential group in government during the thirteen years of Alexander I ll’s reign. One might expect, then, that this group should have been able, in the autocratic Russian state, to carry through to passage and implementation the major elements of its program of counter-reform. Nonetheless, on issue after issue, the reformers of the sixties and their successors were able to fight these proposals for retrenchment to something very close to a stand­ still. Although the counter-reformers were indeed able to secure pas-

T

1

I ntroduction

sage of certain of their most important measures, such passage was accomplished, with only a single major exception, at the price of sig­ nificant modifications and concessions to the opposition. The reasons for this quasi-legislative standoff in a polity in which by fundamental law the will of the autocrat was the supreme law of the land and the formal passage of legislation required no more than his assent or fiat provide a crucial illustration of the nature and workings of late impe­ rial government. In 1881 Alexander III ascended the throne of a Russia beset by cri­ sis. The policies and programs initiated under the new tsar’s father and predecessor, Alexander II, had provoked irreconcilable contra­ dictions between the facts of social reform and the reigning dogma of autocracy. These contradictions and conflicts remained unresolved when on March 1, 1881, Alexander II was killed by an assassin’s bomb, a victim in no small measure of forces that he had himself un­ leashed in undertaking the Great Reforms of the 1860s. For the century and a half before the 1860s, the Russian autocracy had operated within the easy confines of an absolutist doctrine loosely laid over the traditional dogmas of patrimonial autocracy. It could be argued that from the point of view of the autocrats, it had operated reasonably well. But by the middle of the nineteenth century external pressures and changes in the society below had produced a transfor­ mation in the fabric and texture of life such that by the accession of Alexander II increasingly large numbers of thinking Russians were beginning to question basic assumptions of autocratic rule. After the disastrous Crimean episode many had come to believe that Russia could survive as a stable political and social entity only if the nation could tap the creative energies of its people. In this scheme, authoritarian tutelage would diminish as society began au­ tonomous development and participated in the productive process and in the formulation of policies affecting its own condition and state. Among those whose ideas followed these new paths were men close to Alexander II. With his accession, Alexander II initiated a process that in some ways did little more than recognize changes that had al­ ready taken place, but that in other and significant respects set Russia on a new and unprecedented course. The greatest of these changes, and the one from which all others flowed—the emancipation—came with the first of the Great Reforms. In its wake came a range of further consequences. Much of the legal and economic foundation of the privileged status of the nobility was 2

I ntroduction

undermined as the peasants were given limited recognition as legal persons and the right of participation, also limited, in some of the new institutions being created by the autocracy. The reform of the legal system gave the country an independent judiciary; to it the auto­ crat delegated part of his traditional powers, and thereby lost his role as sole statutory dispenser of justice. With the creation of local organs of at least partial self-governance, the zemstvos in the countryside and the dumas in the cities and towns, all of society was given a new role to play; and again the autocratic administration found itself operating under new limitations. The scope of the reforms was wide: they in­ cluded relaxing the censorship, granting autonomy to institutions of higher learning, expanding the whole educational system, and finally, with the institution of universal military service, eliminating the last exclusive privileges of the nobility. These and other related measures could be taken as indications that the autocracy was moving toward the establishment of a more mod­ ern state. Society was gaining rights at the expense of the government, and the exclusive political position of the autocracy, its theoretical au­ thority to exercise arbitrary and total power, was in fact diminishing. The next logical step in the process might well have been to chal­ lenge the very notion of the dynastic autocratic state, but this was a step Alexander II was not ready to take: he had introduced his re­ forms not to abolish or weaken the autocratic system, but to make it work. Nor should it be imagined that many of his countrymen thought very much otherwise. We know today that the system did not grow stronger and that soon enough it was to collapse entirely, and to most observers, not least among them the revolutionaries who were trying to bring about that collapse, surprisingly. But this was by no means apparent to Alexander’s contemporaries. The collapse of be­ lief which was to find most of the nation greeting with relief news of the abdication of the last Romanov was now only in its incipient stages. In 1858 even so fire-breathing a radical as N. G. Chernyshevsky could say, without the slightest hint of irony: “The Blessing which is prom­ ised to peacemakers and the humble will crown Alexander II with a joy that has never yet crowned any of the rulers of Europe, the joy of having alone begun and completed the freeing of his subjects.” 1 Still, even if there existed no great clamor for the overthrow of the autocratic system, the Great Reforms had, by their very promulga­ tion, brought to the fore the basic question of the political system: whether the autocracy could adjust to the changed conditions of a modernizing, open society. In the past, the autocracy’s claim to special 3

I ntroduction

strength had derived from its role in promoting change and advanc­ ing progress. Its ability to respond to changes that it had not itself ini­ tiated would pose a test of a very different sort. Foremost among such challenges was that posed by the changed character and constitution of society. The autocracy had instituted re­ forms in social relationships to ease tensions, but the effect had been instead to introduce new conflicts into the body politic. Nowhere were these tensions reflected with greater severity than in the core group of higher bureaucrats who were at the same time members of society and agents of the tsar. These men, the elite of an apparatus that both constituted a central element of the governing system we call “the au­ tocracy” and served as the executive organ for the head of that sys­ tem, belonged to a body that had undergone particularly rapid change over the previous thirty to forty years. What had earlier been a group of traditional servitors to the tsar was by the last third of the century a functionally structured institution, still in many respects traditional, but in others vastly different in outlook, cohesiveness, and orientation from anything that had existed in Russia before. The increasing inef­ fectiveness of the central government during the last decades of the nineteenth century arose in no small measure from the conflict be­ tween an autocracy that saw its institutional salvation in a return to eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century modes of government and the new bureaucracy, which increasingly gave its allegiance to ideals and values that stood in direct contradiction to the arbitrariness of au­ tocratic modes of governing. To understand the course of events that led to this, it is important to remember the way in which the modern, nineteenth-century autoc­ racy developed out of Muscovite patriarchal concepts. In Muscovite political thought, the tsar was a mystical embodiment of the nation, a figure who held dominion over his realm in the manner of a father over a patrimonial demesne. The patrimonial modes of Muscovy per­ sisted far into the nineteenth century, but from the time of Peter the Great to the mid-nineteenth century the Russian autocracy took its outlook in increasing, if sometimes erratic, measure from the eighteenth-century notion of the well-ordered and well-regulated state (Polizeistaat, Reglamentstaat) of the European absolutist monar­ chies. The idea of the Polizeistaat added to the old Muscovite patterns of rule a new secular rationale that legitimized and justified the exten­ sion of imperial authority into new domains, territories, and areas of responsibility. At the same time absolutism provided a new formal 4

I ntroduction

role for the tsar as the guardian of the rights as well as welfare of the people. Thus far it was easy to achieve a mesh with the methods and ideas of the Muscovite tsardom. Indeed, the one seemed a natural outgrowth of the other, for the tsar served still as “father to his peo­ ple,” in a somewhat revised paternal role. The justification for this re­ vision lay in the confident expectation that the new absolutism in­ cluded a new concept, one that would lead to greater overall efficiency in the administration of the empire. This concept was the rule of law. It introduced into the workings of the Russian autocracy a contradiction whose unsettling effects were to persist through all the succeeding generations of tsarist rule. That this was not immediately perceived need not surprise us. In principle, the rule of law or, to be more accurate, rule through law, was nothing more than a rational means to reach a limited end. If the end was the general welfare, the means would be an efficient, well ordered, and internally consistent administrative system whose purpose was to im­ plement the rational will of the ruler. There seemed nothing threat­ ening about this. Laws were to be formulated by the ruler and then strictly applied by his servitors in order to achieve a system of ordered welfare. The resulting rule through law would benefit the entire state, not least by augmenting the effectiveness of the monarchical power that had promulgated it.2 Difficulties arose from the contradiction inherent in the introduc­ tion of norms of lawfulness, order, and regularity into a system that defined itself in its most basic essentials as unbound by any form of restraint or regularity. The result was a theoretical incongruity be­ tween the rationalism of Polizeistaat legality and the old, patrimonial emphasis on the personal will of the ruler as the semimystical embodi­ ment of the nation and the single source of order. This conflict is di­ rectly expressed in the fundamental laws of the empire. Article 1 of the fundamental laws (redaction of 1832) states that the will of the ruler is the supreme law of the land. Article 47 proclaims just as boldly that Russia is an empire governed on the basis of specific (“pos­ itive” or polozhitelnye) laws emanating from the autocratic power. There is an inherent contradiction here, for according to the tradi­ tional Muscovite conception an autocrat bound by law was no auto­ crat. As we shall see, it was just this conception, and the unlimited, arbitrary exercise of power that went with it, that the tsars were un­ willing to give up or even compromise. It was this power that they felt to be their “tangible personal possession,”3 and it was this power that 5

Introduction

they had in mind when they spoke, in tones of hushed reverence, of their duty to pass along to their successors an undiminished autocratic power. The question before the nation was whether the exercise of such power was compatible with a state based upon principles of regularity and order. During the eighteenth century it had been possible to ignore the question, simply because almost no one had thought to ask how close the fit was between image and reality. Russia was vast enough, her population backward enough, and her dynastic politics turbulent enough that little time was left over for worry about contra­ dictions in the fundamental notions of legitimacy upon which the state rested; it was enough if one ruler was simply more bearable than another, or could offer the hope of being so. But all the while, under the apparent deep stasis of the eighteenth century, forces were at work that produced a mirror image in the succeeding era, when the superficial stability of the early and mid-nineteenth century was able to mask only imperfectly an enormous turbulence of change. The Russian autocracy was not wholly without response to this tur­ moil. On the ideological plane, the doctrine of official nationality was put forth as an attempt to meet some of these forces on their own level and incorporate them into the dogmas of legitimacy. Liberalism, socialism, and the awakening of peoples were to be met and coun­ tered by the Russian trinity of orthodoxy, nationality, and autocracy. But even putting aside for the moment the extent to which such an attempt shows the promoters of autocracy to be out of touch with the forces they were trying to counter, this refurbishing of the values of the Polizeistaat appeared in circumstances vastly different from those in which the older notion of rule through law had been promulgated. The absolutist ideology of the Polizeistaat could not so easily be re­ made into a force for cohesiveness. To oversimplify, one could say that what was happening was a collision between the eighteenth-century absolutist political ideal of the Polizeistaat and the nineteenth-century notion of the Rechtsstaat. The concepts of law and legality are central to both, but the substantive ideas attached to them differ vastly both in meaning and in implication. In the one, legality (zakonnost’) stands for the ordered, hierarchical regulation of all phases of national activity to allow greater scope to the will of the autocrat. In the other, legality encompasses a much broader set of meanings, but at the core of all of them lies some notion of a constitutional order in which the govern­ ment and the head of state are alike subject to the restrictions of a 6

I ntroduction

defined legal order (an order of positive law, to echo the words of the fundamental laws). The conflict between these two differing notions of legality became manifest with the fruition of one of the great experiments under­ taken by the autocracy early in the nineteenth century. This was the attempt to raise the educational level of the elite servitors of the na­ tion (and, significantly, of the clergy as well) through the creation of a system of schools, academies, and special training institutions. The re­ sults in this limited sphere were both spectacularly successful and of great consequence for the future of the autocratic system. The new schools had been set up to produce a trained elite of pro­ fessional civil servants able to run the country in accordance with modern principles. What no observer was able to see at the time is that it is simply not possible to run a country along both modern and pa­ triarchal principles at one and the same time. Thus stated, the prob­ lem is, of course, inescapably obvious. At the time, the inescapably ob­ vious was by no means so apparent, particularly as a good deal of nineteenth-century energy was spent in avoiding its recognition. That the energy was well spent is attested by the assurances, voiced by statesmen on all sides, that the autocracy could continue to operate, unsullied and unalloyed in the extent and scope of its power, in the conditions of the modern, industrializing world. As an exercise in wishful thinking, this was one of the great accom­ plishments of the nineteenth century, and it will be worth our while to spend some time later to determine why it was that so many of the nation’s elite servants wanted to believe this particular fiction. For it was precisely among the higher bureaucrats, who should best have been able to see the contradiction of a “regulated autocracy,” that the notion of autocratic legality had its most fervent partisans. Interest­ ingly, the intellectually limited Alexander III and his closest confi­ dants were better able to see through to the contradiction at the bot­ tom of this deception than were some of the most gifted statesmen of the period. This tells us something about the relationship between those two institutions that were in theory, and often in practice as well, one: the autocracy and the (higher) bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of late imperial Russia had its origins in the growth of ministerial government in the nineteenth century, which had led to corresponding changes in the division of the bureaucratic apparatus along institutional lines. Partly this was simply the necessary result of an exponential growth (there were 4 chinovniki, or civil servants, 7

Introduction

per 1,000 population at the beginning of the century, 10 per 1,000 around 1851, 40 per 1,000 in 1903); partly it came about as a rational product of functional specialization.4 Such growth and the increasing impersonality of the governmental apparatus in themselves implied a dilution of autocratic power, but the parallel development of func­ tional specialization played an even greater role in eroding the practi­ cal scope of the autocrat’s theoretically unlimited exercise of will. The potential for conflict here became actual when various groups among the bureaucracy stepped forward as sponsors, initiators, and formulators of the Great Reforms. For though the reforms were in principle meant to effect accommodations that would assure the autocracy’s survival, their immediate and visible effect was to increase further the strains and tensions already tearing at educated society. These tensions were necessarily reflected in the bureaucracy, which was an important and often leading element of society. As different groups took increasingly polarized positions on the issues facing the nation, the resulting factions found reflection in groups within the bureaucracy. If within this context it was natural for the reformers and their allies to band together, it was just as natural for the autocrat and his entourage to see in such loose groupings of like-minded indi­ viduals a faction in opposition to the autocracy. In truth such groups were held together more by a combination of shared experiences, professional concerns, and old school ties than by political orienta­ tion, let alone a conscious program of action. Thus in assessing the loyalties of the reformers on the basis of their association with such groupings, the autocratic party was usually far off the mark. But it was right nonetheless to sense a threat in the very existence of these representatives of a rationalized bureaucracy. In the case of the reformers, both the program that they supported and the modus operandi of their bureaucratic apparatus were among the elements that finally brought into the open the previously ignorable and ignored contradictions of autocratic legality. For among these men were those who by training could not help but think that in a system of ordered legality the tsar, too, must come under the laws of the realm, for all that these were laws that he himself had promul­ gated. The helpful pretenses of an earlier era, when it had been pos­ sible to talk legality and ordered regularity here, while practicing the wholly arbitrary exercise of authority there, could no longer so easily be maintained. And restraints on the practice of autocracy came not with the exceptions but in the everyday matters of bureaucratic pro­ cedure and policy. In an exceptional matter, the tsar was still autocrat 8

I ntroduction

and bound by nothing. He or his agents could declare martial law, could exile a man to Siberia or a life abroad, could accomplish any number of literally lawless acts. In all this, perhaps the single most important element in the chang­ ing relationship between the tsar and his bureaucrats was the autoc­ racy’s dependence on these new bureaucrats, not as individuals but as a class. For by the era of Alexander III the autocracy was in a position different in kind from anything that had existed before. In an earlier period, one servitor could be replaced more or less by any other. Even a retainer of genius like M. M. Speransky could be summarily dis­ missed as easily as he had once been summarily elevated. In the new age this was no longer the case. It was not that one jurist or one econo­ mist or one engineer could not be replaced by another jurist or econo­ mist or engineer. But none of them could be replaced by someone drawn at random from anywhere in the bureaucratic pool. In a situa­ tion in which an individual was suspect, replacements could be found among any other group of individuals. But in the present case, it was whole classes, whole orders and occupations, that the tsar found sus­ pect. And if one jurist or economist or other expert was more than likely to be just as bad as any other, and if the government was depen­ dent for its very maintenance on whole classes of such suspect individ­ uals, then there was no choice for the tsar but to tolerate and even work with classes of people he neither liked nor trusted. This was the situation under which Alexander III came to the throne, and it is little wonder that, if his new administration and its higher administrative bureaucracy faced off against each other in this manner from the very beginning of the reign, there should follow a growing ineffectiveness in the higher centers of government. Here the contradictions inherent in any attempt at trying to effect a joinder between notions of order and arbitrariness, of legality and autocracy, were felt with particular acuteness. One party or the other could force things to stalemate, but neither the one nor the other could push through and implement policies to correspond to the country’s grow­ ing needs, whether these were for direction and management, or sim­ ply for the freedom to operate wholly apart from government in­ volvement or interference. The central question of concern in this regard is that of power rela­ tionships both within and without the government. The old tutelary notions of the Polizeistaat no longer fit the realities of the day. Large and increasingly vocal elements of both the public and the bureau­ cracy felt that the next step for the government to take was to recog9

I ntroduction

nize the existence of society as a separate entity by ceding to it some participation in the workings of government. But if power was thus to be given over, then it either had to have been expanding overall or had to be given up by someone else. In fact, both things, and particu­ larly the overall expansion of power, were occurring at a rapid pace. The reforms had either brought with them or had directly effected a shifting of power away from traditional bodies. And in most areas of expansion the transition went with no greater difficulty than would normally be expected. The lower governmental structure and the economy of the nation were accommodating change at a rapid pace. Russia was not without economic problems (and agriculture, then as now, was usually the most pressing problem of all), but on the whole the accommodation to enormous change in production, distribution, and management was proceeding well. Mutatis mutandis, much the same seems true in general in most of the areas into which society, public and private, was moving for the first time. In areas where the government had never had its own operations, it was hardly able to stop, in spite of its best efforts, the rapid accommodation of new social organs to new social and economic circumstances. This can be seen, for instance, in the zemstvos, which had their greatest success after the government, through the counter-reforms, had moved to restrict their range of action and effectiveness; significantly, their success came in areas of responsibility the government had never before claimed and where, in consequence, it was least threatened by competition. This aspect of changing power relationships needs to be stressed, if only to emphasize its existence, for it is part of the thesis of this book that the crisis of late imperial government was the direct outcome of the failure of old and new loci of power to move in synchrony with each other and with the forces of modernization. Imperial Russia did not experience a failure of industrialization in the narrow perspective but rather of modernization in the broadest sense, as different levels of society and of government adjusted to the pace of change (and to the existence of change) with greatly varying levels of success. In theory, any exercise of power by someone other than the tsar or his agents constituted an invasion of autocratic prerogatives. But while so wide a claim to power may have been tenable in preindustrial society, it was simply beside the point in late nineteenth-century Rus­ sia. The reach was so vastly beyond the grasp that the claim was not even made with respect to the multiplying new loci of power that in­ dustrialization brought to the social and economic and intellectual arena. Thus, as we shall see in Chapter 8, the indications are that the to

I ntroduction

rapidly growing centers of economic power within the empire existed, in the main, wholly apart from the government, so that to a surprising extent they were irrelevant to one another. This is not to say that the government was not involved in a great deal of economic direction and activity. The point is, rather, that, apart from the special case of the bureaucracy, there was virtually no incorporation into the higher central government organs of representative elements from the many new forces operating within the broader society. Not press lords, nor capitalists, nor rural magnates, nor railroadmen, nor academics, nor bankers, nor zemstvo politicians, nor stockbrokers, nor any others from the groups we think of as the dominant elements (the ruling class) of rising bourgeois society found a place for themselves in the government. Again, this is not to say that no individual from these groups was able to make his way in; as we shall see, Alexander III kept among his closest confidants two government-supported (and supportive) editors, and one of the major irregular appointments of his reign was of a financial wheeler-dealer. Our concern is not with such individual exceptions (even had they occurred with far greater frequency than was in fact the case), but rather with the results of the regular procedures of recruitment into the higher organs of government. And what we find there in the lat­ ter decades of the century is the regular and systematic absence of bu­ reaucratic outsiders in the councils of government. To put it another way, if as observers totally ignorant of late nineteenth-century Russia we were to descend upon that country and try to determine which was its ruling class, we might ask about the distribution of power; and after investigation we would conclude that this was a very fragmented society with little integration of centers of political, economic, intellec­ tual, and other interests. Or we might ask for whose benefit govern­ ment power was directed, and then we might well find ourselves to­ tally confused. For many aspects of government power we would find directed for the benefit of groups we would judge on other grounds to be totally without power (and on this view of things, we might con­ clude that this government was singularly enlightened or progres­ sive). Alternatively, we might simply ask, Who ran the government? And in that case our answer would be straightforward: the govern­ ment was run by itself, that is, by a caste of hereditary government runners. Just as some societies developed hereditary groups of sol­ diers, or landowners, or savants, so Russia developed a group of more or less hereditary bureaucrats. This aspect of things need not be exag­ gerated. We are not dealing here with a society with a rigid caste 11

Introduction

order. Far from it; nineteenth-century Russia was a society of great mobility, and perhaps nowhere was this mobility more manifest than in the ranks of the bureaucracy. But if we look systematically at the class background of the higher bureaucrats who ran the governing apparatus of the society, we find that the only class of which they can be said, as a group, to be representative was the bureaucracy of which they were members. They were the children neither of the rising bour­ geoisie nor of the fading squirearchy. For the most part, they were children of other bureaucrats. To be sure, and this in itself is an in­ dication of the mobility of the society, they were children of the petty bureaucracy rather than of bureaucratic magnates. But, as we shall see, bureaucratic magnates of the previous era were themselves men very different in social origin and background from the newcomers. What this leaves us with is two streams of thought that find their confluence in the workings of the higher bureaucracy. The question with which research on this book began was something in the nature of: How was it that Alexander III was so easily able to press through with the counter-reforms? The revised question with which we start today might be: How is it that the men who ran the higher centers of government were so successfully able to force Alexander III and the reactionary party around him to a stalemate in the battle over the counter-reforms, but were unable, nonetheless, to press forward with any positive program of their own or to fill the power vacuum that seems to have existed in the government? In trying to answer this question, we shall be looking with particular attention at two areas. First, the procedure used to send significant changes in the law, of which the counter-reforms are a major example, through the governmental machinery is examined. With whom and in what manner did such revisions originate? Who had a voice in their formulation? What was the procedure for arriving at the precise lan­ guage used in the final form of such legislation? What bodies, or groups, or representatives of what interests had a voice in the process along the way? The second question to which we shall be paying particular atten­ tion is, Who were the individuals who played the major role in this process? What was their background, and whose interests did they represent? What were their convictions, and to whom or what did they give their loyalties? In answering these questions, we shall be looking at the parties that played the largest role in promulgating the major laws of the empire: the tsar himself; his body of closest confidants, advisers, and minis12

I ntroduction

ters; and particularly the State Council, the consultative-legislative organ of the empire. To examine in detail the manner in which they operated upon and influenced each other, we shall investigate the process through which they arrived at the final formulation of three of the major proposals for counter-reform: the reorganization of the judiciary, the institution of the office of land captain, and the restruc­ turing of the institutions of local self-government.

PART

I Tsar and C ouncil

CHAPTER

1 The Autocratic Heritage Alexander as Man s it happened, Alexander III came to the succession, as to the x \.throne, through a misfortune. He was the second son in the family, and his brother and senior by two years, Nicholas Aleksandro­ vich, was the expected successor to Alexander II. Alexander became aware of his probable future only a few months before Nicholas’s death of meningitis in 1865. He confided then to the tutor of his youth, “I see that there is no longer any hope. The courtiers have all changed terribly their treatment and manner toward me; they have begun to court me.” 1 Few contemporaries thought Alexander a likely prospect for a tsar. In the manner of younger tsarist sons, he had little education and no expected future outside the military; quite in contrast to the majority of his relatives, this was a taste Alexander never acquired.2 He was a very different sort from his older brother, who was generally, and es­ pecially posthumously, regarded as bright, quick, sensitive, imagina­ tive, confident, amiable, tall, and handsome; one can hardly find a su­ perlative that some contemporary or other failed to apply to him. In addition, Nicholas seems to have been idolized and respected even by his younger brother Alexander (but not by his father, Alexander II, who cared little for either of them). His one flaw, a feature that might have stood in the way of his realizing the high expectations of those around him, was a strong streak of what used to be called melancholia.3 When Nicholas died, Alexander took over not only the succession, but also his brother’s personal suite, his friends, and even his fiancée— !7

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and this despite intense feelings for another woman.4 The match proved nonetheless successful, and neither Alexander nor the light­ hearted and gay Princess Dagmar of Denmark, who in 1866 became Alexander’s wife (taking the traditional name Mariia Fedorovna), seems ever to have regretted the marriage. In marriage Alexander III avoided both the lovebird sentimentalities of his successor and the lovers of his predecessors; perhaps he was too unimaginative to do anything else. He remained all his life a devoted husband and family man, while his wife just as carefully refrained from any involvement in politics. Few admired Alexander’s intelligence. Even his greatest apologist, Sergei Witte, thought him “simpleminded and possessed of an almost childlike innocence bordering on naiveté,” particularly with regard to religious beliefs.5 Alexander’s tutor, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the mentor of his youth with whom he formed one of the closest attach­ ments of his life, called him “dense” and contrasted him unfavorably with his dead brother.6 Indeed, it was popularly rumored at the time of his brother’s death that Alexander might be asked to abdicate in favor of his younger brother, the intelligent but, alas, lazy Vladimir.7 This was nothing more than wishful thinking, but it can be taken as a reflection of a widespread feeling about Alexander’s unsuitability for the task facing him. In truth, Alexander did suffer from a very lim­ ited education, and his mind was neither sharp nor quick. But neither was he stupid: he was possessed of a good deal of native intelligence and a common sense that was easily underestimated, partly because he was neither flashy nor sparkling. He was a drab, unimaginative, and stodgy man, but he had the qualities of the steady manager if not the brilliant executive. He grew up in the shadow of an older and a younger brother both thought to be more gifted than he, and in his diary he reflected oth­ ers’ modest opinion of himself. He would like, he said in 1868, to write in detail of his impressions, thoughts, and desires, but apart from considerations of time, to do so would “be of little interest to anyone” anyway. And with a not uncharacteristic touch of self-pity he added that, in any case, “after my death I am sure that nobody will be interested in looking at these books.”6 The lack of self-confidence of the tsesarevich (heir apparent) not only contributed to his reserve and aloofness, but also to an enormous diligence that helped make him one of the most industrious rulers Russia ever had. It was characteris­ tic both of his personal insecurity and of his limited intellectual grasp that as tsar, Alexander issued an order that short summaries of cur18

T he A utocratic H eritage

rent and pending state and legislative matters be prepared for him, since he found it difficult to master the inordinately long and tedious official government papers the chanceries of the time prided them­ selves on producing. (It is equally characteristic that he forced himself to attend to such chores, unpleasant though he found them.) Signifi­ cantly, the very existence of the summaries, which Alexander used to appear informed and knowledgeable even about obscure details of his administration, was kept a closely guarded secret. The officials who wrote the summaries were flattered to have the ear of the tsar in such immediate fashion and passed on what information they could in the hope of pleasing him or being able to influence him to their point of view.9 It was perhaps his lack of self-confidence, together with his habitual shyness, that accounts for Alexander’s tendency to shun Saint Peters­ burg society. He preferred his private residence at Gatchina, where he was able to live a simple and unostentatious life. Though distance was characteristic of the recent Romanov tradition, Alexander more than his predecessors avoided contact with the world at large and, unlike his father and grandfather, never went out among the people. His tendency to isolation was compounded by the strict security mea­ sures initiated after Alexander II’s assassination. Alexander readily accepted his resultant status as a virtual prisoner, as the need for se­ curity served as one more excuse to build a wall of privacy and even secrecy about himself. These features also proved useful incidental tools of administration, and one might further speculate that, in addi­ tion, the tsar’s isolation provided a welcome curtain around a hesita­ tion and irresolution that he was loath to display in public.10 A final benefit of the security measures was that they helped limit the access of the many Romanov relations, most of whom he held in decidedly low esteem. Alexander proved well able to control Romanov family influence during his rule, and the frustrated tribe was able to make up for its patience only later, when it found an easy victim in Nicholas II." Alexander’s highly developed sense of duty and habits of self-disci­ pline often made him return to work late at night or early in the morning after finishing with court engagements. His efforts to stay in control can be seen in such traits as his fondness for categorizing events statistically; his diaries note the number of vyorsts he traveled in a year and the annual count of fires in Petersburg or of guests at his table. As is often the case with men of his sort, Alexander relaxed enough to let down his guard only in the company of children. He particularly 19

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enjoyed his annual sojourns to the country homes of his Danish father-in-law, where he loved to play at the life of the simple family man, favorite uncle, and upright bourgeois. Later in life it was these moments within a close family circle that gave him the only happiness and solace he knew; he found the visits an indispensable elixir and insisted on their taking place no matter what the extremity of circum­ stances at home in the empire; for all his sense of duty, he left even during the great famine of 1892.12 To Alexander’s traits of modesty, insecurity, diligence, and selfdiscipline one must add another characteristic, one that over the years became increasingly prominent and correspondingly frustrating to subordinates. This was a denseness (tupost’) that, after he became tsar, grew more and more into a kind of obstinate self-righteousness most difficult to deal with. This aspect of his character is well described by his teacher of statistics and political economy, F. G. Terner, who en­ countered it in Alexander’s youth and again in the 1880s when he worked as an official in the Ministry of Finance. Terner noted that Al­ exander was “extremely modest and insecure,” but “despite this, dis­ played remarkable firmness or steadfastness in the defense of con­ victions and opinions once acquired. He would always listen to all explanations, but instead of giving detailed objections to those facts with which he did not agree, would at the end simply and rather cate­ gorically speak his own opinions.”13 In this stolid and unassuming manner Alexander managed to com­ bine a good deal of the peremptory as well. As he became accustomed to office and grew increasingly self-possessed, this quality grew pro­ nounced to the extent that contemporaries began to speak more and more of his “drunkenness with power” and sense of “personal impec­ cability.”14 By 1885, Alexander had become used to his status and the idea that his throne was secure, and increasingly he would contrast his own righteousness with the base self-seeking he believed characteris­ tic of most of the rest of humanity. This sense of personal righteous­ ness was only confirmed in his own mind when he personally secured the escape of his family during a railroad accident at Borki, a small town in South Russia: in a display of herculean strength he held the roof of a wrecked dining car up on his shoulders while his family scrambled out from under the rubble. In size Alexander was a typical Romanov, and with his height of six feet three inches he cut an impressive figure. That he was heavyset, with an awkward, ponderous, and clumsy manner may have made him self-conscious, but it also gave him a mien that helped to cow sub20

T he A utocratic H eritage

ordinates, a feature he was both aware of and willing to use. In the close company of a few boon drinking companions he loved to display his incredible strength by chopping down trees in record time or straightening horseshoes with his bare hands; in the privacy of the im­ perial quarters he would go at a trombone with the same kind of fierce determination. Alexander portrayed and seems to have thought of himself as es­ sentially a simple man, and by and large, for all its element of the selfserving, the assessment was not inaccurate. He eschewed luxuries and positively disliked balls, even though (perhaps to allow a contrast with his own righteousness) he did nothing to stop the extravagances of court society. With his stout body—his love for food and drink showed itself increasingly in later years—and with his stern face framed by an imposing beard he projected the very image of the patriarchal mu­ zhik; and indeed he was even called the peasant tsar.15 Although Alexander handled people well at a distance, he dreaded personal confrontations and preferred to deal with subordinates through written comments or resolutions attached to documents sub­ mitted for his inspection. His treatment of people in direct inter­ course was cold and distant; in speech, as in writing, he betrayed his contempt for all of humanity by the terms of abuse he so freely be­ stowed on it: “brutes,” “beasts,” “blockheads,” “canaille” (skot, skotina, dubina); the catalogue assumes a monotonous uniformity. The terms appear with regularity in his written notes and resolutions, and the more refined among his subordinates claimed to find such crudity an assault on their gentility.16 Alexander’s disdain for people, particularly his subordinates, seems to have been genuine. He browbeat his subordinates unmercifully, his own son Nicholas being one of his most unfortunate victims. It does not seem farfetched to argue that through this crippling of his son, he helped also to cripple the nation. He saw the nation as his private pat­ rimony, and as his self-righteousness waxed, so also did his propensity to try to do with the nation what he willed. His efforts only grew in intensity as he found his attempts to control the bureaucracy around him frustrated and thwarted at every turn. All his training had led him to believe the world should be well within the grasp of a single man, but his experience contradicted that training on a daily basis. The manners Alexander assumed as tsar were foreshadowed in his relations with his parents. If he was cold and distant to others, that was the treatment he had received from his parents in a relationship tinged with little affection and less love. The tsar and tsarina did not 21

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particularly like their second son and did little to disguise their feel­ ings. Alexander grew up feeling ignored and neglected in a relation­ ship that grew still more distant after his brother Nicholas’s death, and this in spite of the new heir apparent’s attempts to establish com­ munication. From his vacation home in Denmark he wrote to his friend Prince V. P. Meshcherskii in 1867 about his “constant corre­ spondence” with his parents, and added that “unfortunately, they never answer, and in response to eight letters to Mother and six to Father I have received only one reply from the Sovereign [Gosudar’].” There follows the characteristic touch of self-pity: “But I have no right to complain.” 17 A year later things were no better, and Meshcherskii urged Alex­ ander to improve relations with his father. Alexander demurred. “You know how difficult it is,” he replied, “when the desire for closer intimacy is not mutual. And if there is no unwillingness, then at least there is indifference. I am waiting for it all to come of its own accord; apart from that it is hard to do anything.”18 By this time Alexander’s mother, Mariia Aleksandrovna, was a sick and lonely woman who spent much of her time abroad taking various cures, and she had in any case never loved this son as she had her oldest and favorite. Neither was the father easy to approach. Alex­ ander II was a man jealous of his own authority, particularly, it would seem, with his sons. From the tsar, Alexander heard little over the course of his youth and early manhood other than scolding and pe­ remptory demands for obedience and allegiance.19 Relations between the two were never very good, but they took an irreversible turn for the worse in 1864, when the boy was nineteen and the father initiated an affair that in the eyes of many, and certainly in those of his son Alexander, compromised both the royal family and the autocracy it­ self. In that year—the year before Nicholas’s death—Alexander II began his intimacy with the Princess E. M. Dolgorukova (whom he later made the Princess Yurevskaia). In 1867 the princess was estab­ lished by the tsar in a convenient Saint Petersburg residence, and in 1880 she and her children by Alexander II were ensconced on an up­ per floor of the Winter Palace even as the tsarina lay dying on a lower. To the complete consternation of court gossips, two months after his wife’s death Alexander II entered into a morganatic marriage with his mistress and gave every indication that he intended to make her empress.20 The whole cast of the son’s political views began to crystallize under the impact of the father’s progressing affair. The fa­ ther’s only visible response to the death of one son and the elevation 22

T he A utocratic H eritage

of the second to heir apparent was to become more deeply involved with his mistress. The younger Alexander reacted to all this as to a personal affront, and he seems to have felt that his father was besmirching his patri­ mony. In the division of loyalties that ensued he took a stand firmly in support of his mother. It seems more than likely that Alexander’s op­ position to his father’s policies developed at least as much in reaction to the father’s behavior en famille as it did from reasoned judgment or intellectual conviction. Previously, as a Guards officer, Alexander had been a passive ob­ server and supporter of his father’s reform work, acceding in this to the influence of his older brother Nicholas, who was an enthusiastic partisan.21 Now, left alone and newly married, receiving no guidance or advice from a father he no longer thought worthy of emulation, Alexander became increasingly susceptible to outside influence, and all the more so as it became evident that the Great Reforms had failed to bring about the near-miraculous cures to the country’s problems expected by their enthusiasts. For personal counsel and comfort Alex­ ander looked first to the only slightly older Prince Meshcherskii, join­ ing him in a Pan-Slavist and antireform political discussion circle that met in 1867—1868. This activity quickly earned Alexander his father’s disapproval, and he ordered that his son’s mail be opened and read (an indignity to which another royal contemporary who opposed his father’s policies, the ill-fated Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, was also subjected).22 Throughout the next decade it was Pobedonostsev rather than the father who acted as mentor to the younger Alexander. With his constant criticism of the changes effected by the Great Re­ forms, Pobedonostsev, who skillfully exploited in particular the tsesarevich’s insecurities and fears about his inheritance, contributed much to the erosion of the son’s support for his father’s policies and positions. During this whole period Alexander was isolated from the centers of power, surrounded by and the focus of those who opposed the changes introduced in the empire. But this is not to say that Alexander ever saw himself as part of an opposition; he continued to act the dutiful son in all respects. Instead, and characteristically, he displaced his resentment and antagonism from his father to the men around him, the bureaucrats who became in his mind the source of all the evil and unquiet in the empire. These were in the first order ministers such as D. A. Miliutin, A. M. Gorcha­ kov, and P. A. Shuvalov, but above all of them there stood out in his mind the evil genius, the eminence grise of his father’s reign, the man 23

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who was not tsar but brother to the tsar, the Grand Duke Konstantin, Alexander’s bête noire. To his uncle Alexander credited not only the disruptions of the Great Reforms, the crisis of autocracy of his father’s and his own reign, and every other miscellaneous evil of the time, but also and particularly the responsibility for his father’s assassination.23 In only one area did Alexander, then or later, show open rebellion against his father. This was in his reaction against Alexander II’s pro­ verbial, almost notorious love for everything German, including his ardent backing of Prussia and her political goals, with regard both to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and to her efforts to structure a united Germany under Prussian tutelage. The son, in sharp contrast, hated Prussians and called them beasts; he sided ardently with the French during their war with Prussia, and later, during his own rule, Russian statesmen with German names often found their careers ob­ structed. (But not always: for all his prejudices and convictions, Alex­ ander found himself still having to depend on men with names like Reutern and Bunge and Witte.)24 Added to Alexander’s own anti-German feelings was the influence of his Danish wife, who so hated the Prussians (among other things, for annexing Schleswig-Holstein) that in 1918 in the Crimea she pre­ ferred capture by the Bolsheviks to rescue by Germans (in the event, she was saved by the British).25 Much of the impetus for Alexander’s initial sympathy for PanSlavism probably also came in reaction to his father’s Germanophile tendencies. The young Alexander was a strong supporter of PanSlavic aims associated with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. But the disappointment and rancor occasioned by the outcome of the war and the Berlin settlement (which Alexander interpreted as a blow to Rus­ sian national pride) served to contribute to his burgeoning “Russia first” attitude; over the next few years he adopted a Great Russian chauvinism quite in contrast to the Pan-Slavs’ emphasis on Slavic brotherhood. This kind of exaggerated and often bellicose national­ ism was hardly unusual for the Europe of this period, but it was a first for a Romanov tsar who by blood was wholly (or nearly so) German and the head of a multinational empire almost half of whose popula­ tion was non-Russian. During Alexander’s reign russification of sub­ ject peoples became a dominant aspect of domestic policy. Ostensibly directed at building a more unified state, in Russia, as elsewhere (simi­ lar policies characterized other multinational empires during this pe­ riod), it more often than not alienated and antagonized the subject nationalities, and rather than help to consolidate the state, it contrib24

T he A utocratic H eritage

uted instead to its further destabilization.26 But Alexander’s hatred of the subject and allied nationalities was particularly focused on the Poles, whom he habitually referred to as cattle and whom he thought his father had treated in far too conciliatory a manner.27 Minister of Finance N. Kh. Bunge, himself a russified German, summarized the guiding principles of Alexander’s nationalist policy: “In the Russian state there must reign Russian statehood, that is, Rus­ sian state power and Russian institutions (adapted, of course, to the particular circumstances of foreign tribes and outlying regions); Rus­ sian national principles, that is, the liberation of Russians from for­ eign dominance; the Russian language as the state language; and, fi­ nally, respect and honor for the faith professed by the Russian people and its sovereign.” Or, as P. A. Valuev put it more simply, the order of the day (1882) was “Russian principles, Russian strength, Russian people.”28 In this triumph of things Russian, Jews and Poles served as convenient scapegoats for everything that went wrong, and then, as now, the excesses of anti-Semitism were checked only by fear of arousing the scorn and repudiation of the international community. In Alexander’s case the anti-Semitism rampant in the royal family was fueled both by his nationalistic sentiments and by the primitive ver­ sion of orthodox Christianity—itself not far removed from national­ ism—that he espoused.29 Nationalist sentiments provided Alexander with his only serious pastime. An interest in Russia’s past had been awakened in Alexan­ der’s youth by his tutor of Russian history, the distinguished historian S. M. Solov’ov, a man of moderate conservative and nationalist lean­ ings whose view of the past stressed particularly the organic evolution of the Russian state. In later life Alexander encouraged the study of Russian history and presided personally over the proceedings of the Imperial Russian Historical Society. He was particularly interested in work that would contribute toward a positive appraisal of the reign of his grandfather Nicholas I; he hoped to see Nicholas remembered as something more than a mere soldier. During the reign of the last two tsars—Alexander III and his successor, the first Nicholas’s name­ sake—the time of Nicholas I was viewed with particular nostalgia as the last of the good old days.30 Indeed, Alexander III felt far more kinship with that tsar, his grandfather, than with any other; certainly his father was in almost every respect a model he did not want to imitate. It was Nicholas’s style of ruling that Alexander III aspired to emulate. Both Nicholas and Alexander had inherited the throne through misfortune and in 25

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association with a disaster that neither would ever forget and that was preceded in both cases by a period of flux and change that had itself seemed to engender the ensuing misfortune—in one case a rebellion, in the other, an assassination. Both tsars upon ascending to the throne adopted a policy of firmness and retrenchment, both had impressive physiques and were in character stronger than their heirs, and both were possessed of a single overriding goal that was to dominate their entire rule, the wish to be and stay in absolute control, to be in a real sense the master of their country (the Khoziain—Stalin was not the first autocrat to be so called), who could make his personal will felt at all levels of government and assert autocratic power over all aspects of state and public life. Alexander’s whole attitude toward power and its exercise was shaped by this vision of the Nicholaian way of government, a way that in retrospect, at least, seemed to have worked far better than the ways of his father. That this was also a way far out of tune with the realities of a different time and the needs of a society in the midst of rapid social and economic upheaval was something that Alexander never fully learned. But that this change was associated in some way with the ever-growing bureaucratic apparatus all around him, an apparatus whose increasing functional specialization seemed at the same time to betoken decreased effectiveness and increased erosion of the scope of autocratic power—this he sensed from the very beginning and was determined to counteract. The problem for Alexander was that while he wanted to be the master of his house and grounds in the oldfashioned way, the house and grounds had in the meantime under­ gone radical changes, the old-fashioned ways no longer worked, and the domestics were everywhere usurping the master’s authority. The overall picture that emerges is of a man more complex than has been generally acknowledged. Intellectually unassuming and in­ secure, and in addition modest and diligent, he was also the very type of a stubborn and self-satisfied individual, complacent to the point of self-righteousness. He had a strong streak of cynicism, and though he was himself formally honest, his inability to trust anyone else makes one involuntarily suspicious of his own scrupulosity. He was little given to demonstrativeness, and with age he became inaccessible to anyone except intimates, if, indeed, he even remained accessible to them. Above all, he strove from the very beginning of his reign to present to the world the picture of a firm and resolute monarch whose very being was permeated throughout by an utmost conviction of the 26

T he A utocratic H eritage

rightness of his own actions. He was much concerned with appear­ ance; he feared the impression of dependence more even than de­ pendence itself, and he was convinced from the beginning that to seem strong and independent he must be stern. And it is this quality of sternness, more than anything else, that characterizes Alexander’s reign: it was by and large a stern and, one might add, a gloomy period.

Alexander as Tsar “The voice of God commands us to stand resolutely by the task of gov­ erning, relying on Divine Providence, with faith in the strength and truth of the autocratic power that we have been called to confirm and protect for the good of the people against all encroachment.” With these resounding phrases of the Manifesto of April 28, 1881 (com­ posed for the occasion by the ever-ready Pobedonostsev), Alexan­ der III, permeated with a sense of duty and high calling that needed no encouragement from anyone, announced his unshakable deter­ mination to maintain and solidify the autocratic heritage that he had just received as his patrimony. Many saw Alexander II’s reign as progressive and forward-looking, but his son’s began with a conscious decision to return to the ideologi­ cal formulas of Nicholas I. These included as a prime element the doctrine of official nationality, a formula and set of beliefs that had been conceived and promulgated in the second quarter of the nine­ teenth century as part of the Russian reaction to the whole disturbing era just past, from the Enlightenment through the experiences of the French Revolution, Napoleon, and attempted rebellion. This doctrine represented an attempt to refurbish the natural law theories and pos­ tulates of the eighteenth-century Polizeistaat that had earlier legit­ imized autocracy as a necessary and expedient means of serving the higher ideal of the public good. Alexander I ll’s anachronistic appeal to the trinitarian principles of autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality was a calculated attempt to hark back to traditional values in order to buttress the new regime he had just inaugurated by establishing a link with the old regime as it had existed before his father’s troubled reign. For Alexander III, as for a long line of Russian political thinkers— which is not to say that Alexander was anything of the sort—autoc27

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racy was the indispensable foundation of the Russian state. And like Nicholas before him, Alexander III saw the last two elements of the trinitarian formula as intimately connected with each other and with the first: to be Russian by nationality meant to be orthodox in faith and monarchist by conviction. At the basis of this conception of the autocratic power there lay for Alexander a strong paternalistic im­ pulse mixed with a good deal of the old Muscovite proprietary men­ tality common to all Russia’s rulers with the exception only of a few in the interregnum between “Khoziaeva” of the old and of the new, “peredovoi” (progressive) regime.31 The state was the personal property (a “tangible personal possession,” as Rieber has put it) of the tsar and in his care. As father to his people, he stood above all selfish inter­ ests and acted as disinterested guarantor of the commonweal. Under this formulation, of course, the welfare of the people was equated with the welfare of the tsar, just as the power and glory of the state were equated with the power and glory of the head of that state, the tsar-batiushka (little father).32 It is important to stress that this image of the patriarchal tsar was not merely the selfish and self-serving invention of the rulers them­ selves but is in some measure common to Russian monarchists and political philosophers from Ivan Peresvetov to Alexander Solzheni­ tsyn. The mystique of the tsar was succinctly expressed in Alexan­ der I ll’s time by Sergei Witte, Alexander’s minister of finance and resident genius, a man who can hardly be called a mindless enthusiast for any proposition. His patron Alexander III was, he said, “the very type of a truly autocratic monarch, of an autocratic Russian tsar—and the concept of the autocratic Russian tsar is inseparably linked with the concept of the tsar as the self-effacing patron of the Russian people, the defender of the weak; for the prestige of the Russian tsar is founded on Christian principles; it is linked with the idea of Chris­ tianity, with the idea of orthodoxy.” The tsar, Witte went on, stood above all selfish interests such as “prevail among ordinary mortals, above all the egotistical material interests that so often corrupt the hu­ man heart.”33 And the amazing thing is that he seems to have meant this, for he wrote it out of no sycophantic impulse. Despite such protestations of disinterestedness from apologists who argued that the tsars were above all else dedicated to the welfare of the Russian people, it is at least arguable that a proprietary impulse lay at the base of the tsars’ conception of their role. One the least bit cynically inclined cannot but wonder at how often the welfare of the 28

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Russian people coincided in practice with the preservation and exten­ sion of the undiluted power of the autocrat. Alexander II, for in­ stance, invoked his “unselfish concern” for the welfare of the Russian people as reason for rejecting a proposal that a few members of the nobility be elected to the State Council. He was forced to take this ac­ tion, he said, “not because I am jealous of my power, but because I am convinced that it would harm Russia and lead to her destruction.” Nineteen years later, in 1881, his son Alexander III outlined a similar view in a letter to Pobedonostsev: “Loris, Miliutin, and Abaza [minis­ ters of interior, war, and finance, inherited from his father] positively continue the same policy and want us to move toward a representative government; but until I am convinced that it is necessary for the hap­ piness of Russia, this, naturally, will not come to pass; I will not allow it. And I am hardly likely to be convinced to support such a mea­ sure— I am too convinced of its harm.” In a letter to his brother Vladi­ mir, Alexander repeated the same idea, emphasizing that “I shall never permit the limitation of autocratic power, [for] I find it neces­ sary and useful for Russia.” And in another letter to Pobedonostsev he again protested, this time with the note of self-pity one comes to expect in his private correspondence, that his dedication to the pres­ ervation of untrammeled autocratic power is wholly inflexible and unswerving. Without the slightest trace of self-doubt or questioning he told his correspondent that “I am too deeply convinced of the dis­ gracefulness of the representative elective principle ever to allow it into Russia in the form it now exists in Europe [one wonders in what other form he was ready to let it in]. Let them go ahead and abuse me; perhaps after my death they will still abuse me. But maybe the day will also come when finally they will begin to speak well of us.”34 To say this is merely hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness is too easy. This is not the place to go into the reasons for the prevalence of such a political philosophy in Russia, but the fact remains that variants of this manner of thinking were widespread within Russian society at all lev­ els. The tsar did not feel isolated in taking such a position, and he could reasonably expect to find apologists for his action in the future just as his predecessors had in the past; from his point of view there was little reason to expect that posterity would not eventually judge him right and acknowledge the service he had rendered Russia. And if the time was late to invoke such notions as the formulas of official nationality, Alexander III did not feel the anachronism. And neither, for that matter, did his heir Nicholas, who returned to the still older 29

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notion of rule by divine right, a religious justification far out of tune with even the theological, let alone the secular, thought of the emer­ gent twentieth century.

The Problem of Bureaucratic Sedition Alexander I ll’s allegiance to the autocratic principle was questioned by no one; the allegiance of his bureaucracy was questioned by almost everyone, including members of that selfsame bureaucracy.35 By the time of Alexander III it was already traditional for the autocrat’s atti­ tude toward his bureaucracy to be dominated by the fear that the very existence of such an auxiliary organ constituted a potential limitation of power. Not only did the hierarchical structure of the bureaucracy limit the disposition that the autocrat could make of its members, but its expertise and organization made the bureaucracy appear always to be in possession of specialized information inaccessible to any outsider. The tsars’ fear of bureaucratic encroachment on their power and authority increased with the expansion of the bureaucratic apparatus that came with the introduction of ministerial government under Al­ exander I. Bureaucratic growth continued under Nicholas I at such a rapid pace that by 1847 Count S. S. Uvarov did not find it too far­ fetched to charge that the bureaucracy as an institution had acquired a sovereignty of its own to rival that of the autocracy: Uvarov pre­ dicted the bureaucracy would play a role comparable to that played by the bourgeoisie in Western Europe. In a memorandum addressed to Nicholas I, Uvarov called the bureaucrats “an estate of people with­ out a past or a future.” They were, he pointed out, “similar to the class of proletarians . . . with the higher orders evading service and the lower still immature; this class will rise with irresistible strength; this will mark the transfer of political activity into the hands of a middle class, which in other European states is called the tiers état or bour­ geoisie."56 Uvarov’s remarks, which seem prescient of the situation a hundred years later rather than perceptive of his own time, show nonetheless clearly the distrust and fear of the ever-increasing num­ ber of bureaucrats. This fear of a “sovereign” bureaucracy, whatever its exaggerations, was associated with real changes in the relationship of the autocrat to 30

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his servants. For one thing, as the growth of the bureaucracy led to the increased institutionalization and functional specialization of the bureaucratic apparatus, the theoretically absolute power of the auto­ crat was in fact being eroded. For while the tsar still stood theatrically alone at the top of the governmental structure as sole central direct­ ing agent, in practice such direction had long since become a task far beyond the powers of any single individual. By Alexander’s time the autocrat could not help but see that his administration was far too complex for him to control by himself; from this it was but a short imaginative step to see himself as little more than a figurehead, a cere­ monial head of state who occupied an anachronistic position and whose real functions had been taken over by an impersonal bureau­ cracy interested in its own ends and needs. In the meantime, the bureaucracy was itself developing in response to the demands put upon it by the task of administering a rapidly changing and expanding society. For a variety of reasons, including the stagnation of other elements of society, the Russian bureaucracy increasingly found itself entrusted with tasks that in other countries were handled by individual or corporate bodies not directly associated with the government or the administration, and often these duties— as indeed, the task of government itself—demanded a considerable degree of professional competence and expertise. The professionally trained officials who began to emerge in re­ sponse to such demands, especially in the last decade of the Nicholaian autocracy, in considerable measure made possible and gave the impetus to the preparation, formulation, and execution of the Great Reforms.37 The very existence of such officials, trained as specialized experts, led to the development of a system of promotion and reward in which competence and merit were added to the traditional single criterion of seniority as requisites for advancement in the service. The change in practice was accompanied by a change in language. In the 1870s Mackenzie Wallace noted that whereas earlier the “ap­ pointment to an office generally depended on the chin, now there is a tendency to reverse the old order of things and make the chin depend upon the office held.” This new man was called an “officeman” or dolzhnostnoe litso rather than a “rankman” or chinovnik', the latter term was retired from the official lexicon to be called back to service pri­ marily (and frequently) as a term of usually humorous abuse.38 The new type of official differed from his predecessor in respects other than name: while his equivalent in earlier times had quickly found a comfortable niche within the monarchic structure, the new man usu31

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ally combined professionalism and expertise with a strong reformist bent. The new official’s attachment to reform could not have been greater: he was involved first in initiating the reforms and then in administer­ ing them; finally, when the reforms had themselves become part of the status quo, he constituted with his peers one of the strongest fac­ tions associated with their preservation. It was, indeed, an attachment to the reforms that served to unify various and diverse reformist offi­ cials; among them the traditional loyalty of the dedicated servant to the person of the tsar was replaced by an ethos of service to society, which was in its turn associated with loyalty to a more abstract concep­ tion of government based on law and justice. In the sources and memoirs of the time this group is referred to as the faction of “bureaucratic liberals,” and it was they and the notions of liberalism felt to be attached to them that most provoked the dis­ trust of the autocrat.39 This distrust began to be felt strongly in the time of Alexander II, immediately in the wake of the reform period, by both the tsar and his heir apparent, and it continued to grow to such an extent that N. P. Ignat’ev, minister of the interior under Alex­ ander III, could suggest a thoroughgoing purge of the bureaucratic apparatus on grounds of loyalty. Ignat’ev’s distrust is apparent in the memorandum on the subject he submitted to the tsar upon his accession. For the most part, these officials were guilty, he said, of downright “sedition” and were “the real initiators of the revolutionary movement.” The solution to the problem, he suggested, was a shake-up from top to bottom. Alex­ ander was only too quick to agree with Ignat’ev’s views, commenting on the memo that “this is, unfortunately, the clearest truth.” And per­ haps the two troubled men had indeed a point, for as Torke has pointed out, many of the budding revolutionaries, including Alex­ ander Dolgushin and the brothers Ulianov, grew up in the homes of tsarist bureaucrats. But whatever the validity of Alexander’s and his minister’s fears, there was little they could do about the threat they thought they saw: a purge was out of the question, and not simply, as Zaionchkovskii has suggested, because the autocracy would have lost prestige in admitting that its apparatus was unreliable.40 More impor­ tant was that the tsar was dependent upon the bureaucacy as it was constituted for the administration of the state: there simply did not exist a “loyal” group of officials large enough to carry out the tasks of administration. The conflict, which by this time seemed inherent in the relationship 32

T he A utocratic H eritage

between the autocrat and his institutions of government, was another, albeit unwelcome, part of Alexander’s patrimony, and one he could do little about. Alexander keenly felt his dependency on the bureau­ cracy—and just as keenly resented it. His remark on the occasion of a toast that he “despised the administration and drank champagne to its destruction” hardly sounds like a head of state speaking of his faithful retainers—nor even of a loyal civil service.41 And while it is true that the attempt to regain control over the bureaucracy and reassert per­ sonal authority over the organs of government was by this time a tra­ ditional gesture for each newly anointed tsar, in Alexander I ll’s case it became a passion that left him no peace and gave him no satisfac­ tion. For if it was Alexander’s desire to subject his bureaucracy to a “strict discipline” on the model of the Belgian, Prussian, and French bureaucracies “on whom,” as he put it, “their governments could rely,” he ended his reign as dissatisfied with the reliability of those who were ostensibly his servants as he had begun it.42 It is difficult to imagine things being otherwise. In other coun­ tries—certainly in Belgium and France, and even, to a considerable extent, in the Prussia that Alexander cited as his model—there ex­ isted something in the way of a loyal opposition, part of and yet apart from the governing bodies of the state. In Russia there was no such thing, nor was there a chance of Alexander tolerating any move in that direction. The result was that any opposition to government pol­ icy had to come from within the government—there was, in effect, no “without” that was still associated with the government. But here surely Alexander was right, from his own perspective at least, to see opposition from within as a kind of disloyalty verging on the trea­ sonous. What he wanted was to be able to enforce the kind of total loyalty to decisions once taken that his latter-day successors seem to have been able to attain, though admittedly by means rather harsher than anything he was willing to employ. In all of this Alexander’s problems were exacerbated, though he would hardly have been likely to admit it, by the nature of the govern­ ment at whose head he stood. That there existed no legislature made things not better but worse, for this meant that what opposition might exist to legislative projects would come from within the executive it­ self. And certainly it was not a characteristic of the tsarist government alone to regard such internal opposition as disloyal. All of these conflicts with the bureaucracy as a whole were reflected with particular acuteness in Alexander’s relations with that supreme organ of his executive that was supposed to function somehow as a 33

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quasi-legislature: the State Council. For the State Council was, accord­ ing to the legal framework of the Russian Empire, the institution clos­ est to the person of the autocrat himself. And Alexander III took this to mean that the duty of this closest institution was, as he put it, “to help me and the government, and not to stand in opposition.”4* This notion of close partnership, and the attitudes that it engendered, could hardly help but lead to the tsar’s construing all differences of opinion within the Council—even the differences between factions— as purposeful opposition to himself and thus an attack on his person and on the autocracy itself. So it makes perfectly good sense for Alex­ ander to wonder, as he plaintively expressed it, why it was “that the opinions expressed in the State Council are not the same as the opin­ ions that I myself express.” And yet Alexander did not hew to this position with universal consistency. While on one occasion he seemed to view any opposition within the Council as the next thing to trea­ son, on another he could with marked reasonableness explain that he was quite willing to accept differences in the Council because after all “it would make no sense to try to achieve unanimity at any cost whatever.”44 A similar quality of contradiction, or perhaps vacillation, character­ ized Alexander’s appointments to the Council—the single most effec­ tive way of influencing Council action that he had at his disposal. On one occasion, Alexander would justify his selection of a particular candidate on the grounds that the new member would contribute sig­ nificantly to the “enlargement of opinions,” while on another he would turn full circle to approve the retirement of someone because this man’s absence would happily “lessen differences of opinion.”45 Unless such statements be attributed to mere willfulness, it seems that attitudes as contradictory as these must be explained as indications that the tsar wanted to justify his actions by appeal to some presumed higher principle, now of unanimity, now of diversity, or, perhaps, as yet further indications of the ambivalence of his feelings about what the Council was and what it was supposed to do. The most important element contributing to such ambivalence was again the tsar’s doubts about the steadfastness of the Council’s dedica­ tion to the principle of unalloyed autocracy. In the 1860s and again in the fateful crisis of 1880-1881, the Council had been a major source of ideas and proposals for constitutional change. Although nothing in these schemes even approximated the establishment of a true parlia­ mentary system, still proposals for any kind of substantive constitu34

T he A utocratic H eritage

tional change coming from those so close to the very fountainhead of the autocracy could not help but arouse the grave suspicion and fears of Alexander III, whose jealousy of the autocratic power kept him on constant guard against the slightest indication of even minor diminu­ tions in it. For Alexander the very word “constitution” had revolutionary im­ plications, and his usage was so broad as to be meaningless, except to signify something he neither liked nor trusted. Thus even the invi­ tation of “informed people” to give expert testimony to the State Council, a right that was granted to the chairmen of State Council de­ partments when the Council was established, was interpreted by Alex­ ander as constitutionalism. And when debate in the Council over leg­ islative projects that Alexander wanted resulted in differences of opinion, this, too, he called constitutionalism.46 But what aroused the particular wrath of Alexander was the fa­ mous Loris-Melikov proposal of 1881. This is the plan referred to in textbooks as the “constitution” that Alexander II was supposedly about to sign when he was assassinated. But the name “constitution” was seized upon by Alexander III, then heir apparent, to apply as a term of abuse to a plan that had about it nothing either constitutional or parliamentary. The bodies that M. T. Loris-Melikov proposed to call into existence were to be entirely advisory, and the author of the plan went to great lengths to assure his royal patrons that he himself was convinced that “it would be unthinkable for Russia to have any form of popular representation based upon Western models.” The groups he proposed to create would be nothing more than prepara­ tory commissions, with a membership chosen from “informed indi­ viduals” in the bureaucracy, the zemstvos, and the public at large. Their function would be to give a kind of expert testimony on the merits of the legislative proposals of the various ministries. There would be two such commissions, one to deal with administrative and financial matters, one with purely economic questions. Their separate recommendations would then be passed on to an intermediary body composed of elected zemstvo and duma delegates, and from there to the State Council, which was also to be leavened with elected delegates from the dumas and zemstvos. The younger Alexander was adamant in his opposition: the plan must be rejected, he said, because such a “constitution” would produce instability and administrative ineffi­ ciency and thus could only harm Russia. In Alexander’s opinion, par­ liamentary representative government or anything resembling it must 35

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inevitably lead to a decline of political authority, accompanied invari­ ably by corruption and demagoguery: the government would soon be filled with “troublesome brawlers and lawyers.”47 The font of all such constitutionalism was, as Alexander saw it, the State Council. His distrust for the Council was exacerbated by its in­ volvement with the notion of legality and so with the complicated is­ sue of what role law was to play in the autocratic system in which the State Council functioned as a primary organ and symbol of legality and legitimacy. Thus on the one hand Alexander insisted that the au­ tocracy operated on principles of law, but on the other he regarded these very laws and the men who administered them as dangerous. Alexander’s less than complete commitment to his own ostensible con­ victions can be seen in his reaction to a case in which he had to change a decision he had made because it contradicted the law. “Well,” he said rather reluctantly, “if that’s the way it is according to the law, as Koni writes, then let it be decided that way . . . he holds all the cards in his hands.”48 One can almost sympathize with Alexander in his perplex­ ity, for though surely he was not the only ruler to be confronted with a law that contravened his will, certainly in Russia he was one of the very first. Alexander’s unenthusiastic response to the intervention of the law in matters of his autocratic will was closely tied to the many fears he held in regard to his autocratic heritage and perhaps even more to his fear that posterity might look upon him with contumely for having failed to pass on the full measure of that patrimony to his heir. The tenor of Alexander’s relations with his organs of government thus took its origin in a multiplicity of intertwined factors. Alexander thought the Council less than loyal to the principle of autocracy. He was unsure about and mistrustful of the whole matter of legality. He had doubts about the reliability of Council personnel, many of them reformist officials closely associated with the changes in government initiated during his father’s reign and perhaps desirous of more; to make matters worse, the customary policy of appointment for life made it difficult—though in theory not impossible—to get rid of men he thought potentially dangerous. All of these factors—not to men­ tion the incessant pressure he felt from such enemies of the State Council as Pobedonostsev and Meshcherskii—combined virtually to guarantee that from the very beginning of his reign he would view the Council with fear, suspicion, and reservations about its allegiance and loyalty. And this is by no means to imply that his fears and suspicions were 36

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wholly unfounded. On the contrary, to a considerable extent Alex­ ander’s feelings can be seen as a rational response to a real threat. It was a matter of fact and not simply paranoid suspicion that many Council members were covertly and even openly hostile to Alexan­ der’s aims, and particularly to his intention to curb the thrust of the Great Reforms. And it was true also that the innocent schemes for government reorganization proposed by Loris-Melikov and others were innocent and “unparliamentary” largely because their propo­ nents knew in advance that even so progressive a tsar as Alexander II, let alone his son and heir, would not consider anything that resembled, no matter how remotely, the forms of constitutional monarchy. No, the real problem from Alexander’s perspective was that he could not do without the State Council and its expertise. On the one hand he genuinely felt a need for the measure of legitimacy that Council processes gave to government actions; he was, he felt, a Euro­ pean monarch, and European monarchs in the late nineteenth cen­ tury did not disport themselves in the manner of barbarian chieftains or oriental despots. Governmental processes in civilized, nineteenthcentury Europe were conducted by stable organs operating according to regular procedure; the State Council was the prime organ of such procedure in an empire otherwise characterized by irregularity. On the other hand, and more vexingly, Alexander needed the Council because he could not rule without it; for if he were to abolish the Council he would only have to create another similar organ to carry out its functions. The time for one-man rule in the Russian Em­ pire of the old regime was past; the new empire would see it again, but only under the legitimizing mantle of a new faith and a new creed. Alexander may have been right that Russia was not yet and would not soon be ready for parliamentarianism; but surely she was at the same time seriously beginning to question her willingness to tolerate un­ alloyed autocracy of the Nicholaian model. The personality and char­ acter of the head of state are not beside the point, and it is at least arguable that a tsar less inept than Nicholas II might not have bun­ gled things quite so badly, or that a more broadly educated and less intolerant monarch than Alexander III might have acted as a more successful midwife at his country’s passage into the modern world. But whatever one’s speculations on these points, there seems little question that a return to the days of a Nicholas I or a Catherine II was in the late nineteenth century and under the old dispensation not merely unthinkable but impossible.

37

CHAPTER

2 The Council: Structure and Role in Government The State Council: uThe Focal Point of the Central Administration”

n January 11, 1810, the young and enigmatic Tsar Alexander I established the State Council of the Russian Empire. This con­ sultative legislative assembly was created as partial fulhllment of th emperor’s promise, made in 1801, to continue and extend the effort begun by Peter the Great to establish the Russian autocracy on a foun­ dation of law and legal procedure. The new instrument, whose con­ ception lay among the subordinate elements of Speransky’s plans to reform the governmental structure of the empire, was hardly an in­ novation. The government had long had need for a regular consulta­ tive body to assist the tsar in developing new legislation, and some such assembly had been in existence not only throughout the eigh­ teenth century (as, variously, the Privy Council, the Imperial Council,

O

38

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the Permanent Council), but also in Muscovite Russia as the Boiarskaia Duma.1 Alexander I was engaged during this period in a flurry of reform activity, with Speransky as his principal adviser and mentor. To strengthen the autocracy and make it more effective, Speransky pre­ pared projects that would introduce broad reforms of the governmen­ tal structure, streamlining and rationalizing the central government apparatus. His constitutional project (which was never implemented and was not even published in full until 1905) put particular emphasis on a division of governmental functions for the effective exercise of autocratic authority through regular channels. Legislative authority was to be apportioned between the tsar, who retained full legislative initiative and final approval of laws, and a state duma, whose mem­ bers were to be elected on the basis of strict property qualifications in a series of indirect elections from the township level up. Executive power was to be in the ministries, which would be supervised by a gov­ erning senate; to avoid an increase of ministerial power, there was no committee of ministers, while judiciary authority would be exercised by an institution to be called the judiciary senate. At the apex of this governmental structure was the State Council, which would function as a link between the tsar and other parts of the government.2 Speransky argued for the creation of the State Council by observing that “in the present system of government there is no institution for the general deliberation of governmental affairs from the point of view of their legislative aspect. The absence of such an institution leads to major disorders and confusion in all parts of the administration” ; he argued further that “such an institution is essen­ tial in order to ensure the strength and permanency of the law.” The State Council, then, was founded to put an end to the “arbitrariness and great incoherence” in the processing of legislation and to estab­ lish the administration of the state “on the firm and indispensable foundations of law.”3 A further statement on the role of the State Council came in a sol­ emn speech written by Speransky and read to its newly appointed members by Alexander on the day of its inauguration. The order and uniformity o f state affairs require that there should be a single focal point for their general consideration. In the present struc­ ture o f our administration, we do not have such an institution. In such a vast state as this, how can the various parts o f administration function 39

T sar and C ouncil with harmony and success when each moves in its own direction and when these directions nowhere lead to a central focus? Given the great variety o f state affairs, the personal activity o f the supreme power alone cannot maintain this unity. Beyond this, individuals die and only institu­ tions can survive and, in the course o f centuries, preserve the basis o f a state. . . . Today, with the beginning o f the new year, I have the satisfac­ tion o f placing on a firm basis one o f the most important state institu­ tions. The State Council will form the focal point o f all affairs o f the central administration. Its existence henceforth stands on the order o f permanent institutions and belongs to the very essence o f the Empire.4

According to Alexander, the State Council was to be the highest among the so-called supreme organs (verkhovnye organy) of govern­ ment. As the “focal point of all [governmental] affairs,” it would func­ tion on a permanent basis to coordinate, hold together, and “preserve harmony” among the subordinate organs (podchinennye organy)— primarily, that is, among the ministries of the administration (which were also soon to be reformed, in 1811). In addition to the State Council, there were two other permanent supreme organs with analo­ gous roles vis-à-vis the ministries: the Senate, which was concerned primarily with judicial questions, and, in disregard of Speransky’s plan, a Committee of Ministers, which dealt primarily with executive matters. By the time of Alexander I ll’s accession, there had come into exis­ tence, alongside these three major entities, several additional su­ preme organs. Of these, the Council of Ministers, which was presided over directly by the tsar, was potentially the most significant. This body had been created in 1861 to coordinate policy and long-range planning among ministers and to promulgate ministerial solidarity on legislative proposals to be submitted to the State Council. Though officially not abolished until 1905, the Council of Ministers was not allowed to function for long, primarily because the tsar feared that it might be a prelude to cabinet-style government. Other supreme organs included His Majesty’s Own Imperial Chancery and the admi­ ralty and military councils, which were responsible for legislative proj­ ects concerned with matters under their jurisdiction. Characteris­ tically for the autocratic system, all of these technically subordinate bodies could and often did bypass the regular supreme organs in the execution of their duties. In addition, it not infrequently happened that temporary supreme organs would be created to deal with specific measures on an ad hoc basis, particularly when it was thought desir­ able to bypass regular channels in the interests of efficiency, speedy 40

T he C o u n c il : S tructure and R ole

passage, or the avoidance of organized opposition; such, for instance, was the Committee for the Siberian Railroad, which was used to chan­ nel measures that already had the explicit approval of the tsar through and past the State Council.5 This proliferation of organizations with overlapping, vague, and illdefined areas of jurisdiction became a characteristic feature of the structure of the Russian state as it evolved during the nineteenth cen­ tury. It was one of the main symptoms of contradictions inherent in the attempt to graft a structure of law and regular procedure upon a system autocratic and arbitrary in conception and essence. As this diverse and uncoordinated administrative apparatus ex­ panded and grew more complex over the course of the nineteenth century, the operation of the government came to depend in increas­ ing measure on functionally specialized, self-contained, and isolated ministries. The whole process was exacerbated, first, by the quantum jump in the growth of such ministries that occurred after the 1850s, and second, by the de facto abolition through disuse of the Council of Ministers, which had been the only body concerned with interministerial policy coordination and planning. Ministers began to devise their own methods of cooperation and coordination and increasingly used the supreme organs for their own purposes and needs. In the course of events the State Council, the supreme supreme organ, became ever more the major arena used by ministers to reconcile their differences on legislative projects and thus served as a kind of court of concilia­ tion among ministries.6 According to the terms establishing the State Council, its primary function was to be the consideration of legislative projects and annual budgets: after due deliberation, the Council would make appropriate recommendations to the tsar. The first three articles of the Establish­ ment state the case with apparent clarity and lack of ambiguity: 1. In the hierarchy o f state institutions, the Council is the body [soslovie] in which all parts o f the administration are ordered in their principal relations to legislation, and through it they rise up to the Supreme Imperial Power. 2. Therefore, the preliminary drafts o f all laws, statutes, and institu­ tions are submitted to and considered by the State Council and then, by act o f the Sovereign Power, forwarded for implementation. 3 . No law, statute, or institution may issue from the Council and be im­ plemented without confirmation by the Sovereign Power.7

The Council was to be, then, a forum in which proposed legislation could be debated, reformulated, and polished before presentation to 41

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the autocrat with a recommendation for action. The Council had no power either to initiate or to promulgate legislative projects; its func­ tion was purely advisory, and the tsar remained free to accept, reject, or modify the Council’s recommendations at will. Council membership was made up of ministers, who were members ex officio, and other persons appointed at the direction of the tsar.8 According to custom, the latter were chosen from among civil and military bureaucrats in the highest three ranks. Tenure was for life, though the autocrat retained the right (seldom exercised) to dismiss a member at any time. Appointment to the Council was considered both a high honor and a reward for past service. There was no legis­ latively prescribed maximum or minimum Council membership, and* over the course of the nineteenth century the number of members rose steadily from thirty-five in 1810 to between fifty and sixty in the 1880s and then to more than eighty in the first decade of the twen­ tieth century. In structure the Council consisted of a varying number of standing committees, called departments (departamenty), and of a General As­ sembly (obshchee sobranie) made up of the members of the departments plus additional members appointed to the General Assembly alone, with no departmental assignment. Annual sessions began in October and usually ran into late May or early June, when government offices broke for a long recess to escape the inhospitable Petersburg summer; this timetable sometimes proved useful when the Council wished to delay or kill a ministerial project. The General Assembly was presided over by the tsar or by a presi­ dent who held an annual appointment. In actual fact, the tsars pre­ sided only rarely after the first year of the Council’s establishment, and after 1861, when Alexander II personally pushed the Emancipa­ tion Statute through the Council, they did so only for ceremonial pur­ poses. For the General Assembly, as for the Council as a whole, there was no fixed number of members, but it appears that at least one tsar, Alexander II, considered the minimum number for a quorum to be ten members over and above the ministerial staff.9 According to the original terms establishing the Council, there were four departments, each with a competence broadly enough defined to allow for considerable flexibility and room to maneuver. The Depart­ ment of Law dealt with legal matters, Civil and Religious Affairs with clerical, judicial, and police matters, and Economy with industry, trade, science (nauka), and finances generally, in particular taxes and 42

T he C o u n c il : S tructure and R ole

the budget. A fourth department, that of Military Affairs, ceased to function actively in 1858, though it was not officially abolished until 1901. From 1832 to 1862 there existed a Department for Polish Af­ fairs, and in 1900 a Department for Trade, Science, and Commerce was created to relieve the work load of Economy. Except for various extraordinary measures and declarations of war or peace, which were discussed only in the General Assembly, all legis­ lative projects were submitted first to the appropriate department. When a particular project touched on matters under the jurisdiction of more than one department, the concerned departments met in combined session under the chairmanship of the department in which the matter had been introduced originally. Minimum depart­ mental membership consisted of a chairman plus three others, and in the 1890s, averaged no more than about six per department. This im­ posed a heavy burden on those who served, since the bulk of substan­ tive Council work was done in the departments. One of the most con­ scientious and diligent members of the Council, B. P. Mansurov, wrote in 1884 that “if a member of the State Council does his business as he should, it is impossible for him either to search out allies or fore­ see on his own everything that he should—nor, for that matter, can he even read everything through properly.” 10 The heaviness of the work load (see Table 1) suggests that a good many projects were processed through the departments in a merely formal manner, but it seems that there was little out-and-out rubberstamping. Discussions on projects were often lively, and in a majority of cases the departments were able to arrive at a reasoned consensus. This was important, for once matters reached the General Assem­ bly—which usually met no more than once a week for about an hour or so—deliberations were restricted to sanctioning or disapproving departmental recommendations. If departmental discussions had re­ sulted in a split opinion, then a majority and one or more minority reports would be forwarded to the General Assembly, which would debate the various opinions submitted and then submit its own rec­ ommendation (which could itself consist of majority and minority ver­ sions) to the tsar for final disposition. It should be noted, incidentally, that many if not most questions of potential disagreement were han­ dled outside the chambers of the State Council or even the depart­ ments in unofficial meetings and conferences between Council mem­ bers and the ministerial staff submitting the project. Once Council recommendations had been formulated, they were 43

Table 1.

Council Work Load Departments

Year 1870 -1 8 7 4 1875 -1 8 7 9 1880 -1 8 8 4 1885 -1 8 8 9 1890 -1 8 9 4 1895 -1 8 9 7

Law

Economy

Civil

General Assembly

Sessions Cases (N) (AO

Sessions Cases (AT) (AO

Sessions Cases (N) (AO

Sessions Cases (AT) (A0

Total Sessions (A0

Cases (A0

32

111

68

723

23

55

30

239

153

1,128

39

113

53

639

22

79

23

206

137

1,037

35

133

72

705

14

57

31

177

152

1,072

36

98

63

626

21

123

27

276

147

1,123

31

83

52

366

43

332

32

341

158

1,142

25

16

23

272

46

306

18

292

112

886

Source: B. M. Kochakov, “Gosudarstvennyi sovet i ego arkhivnye materialy,” p. 93. Note: N = annual average.

T he C o u n cil : S tructure and R ole

compiled in the Chancery of the Council, signed by both the Council president and the head of the Chancery—a functionary called the state secretary (Gosudarstvennyi sekretar’)—and then submitted to the tsar in a weekly memorandum (memoriia). These memoranda, which were initiated in 1816, included in brief form an outline of the sub­ stance of each project, a report on the debate it had occasioned, and any changes resulting from that debate. In cases in which there had been disagreement on the recommendation to be made, the memo­ randum gave the essence of the various arguments and listed the members and ministers who had spoken in support. Officially, the tsar made his decisions to approve or reject Council recommendations on the basis of the information provided in these memoranda; in prac­ tice he could choose to support one or another side—or, for that mat­ ter, reach an entirely independent opinion of his own—on any basis whatsoever, with no accountability to anyone. If the tsar approved a Council recommendation that was a majority or unanimous opinion, it was promulgated as a “Highest Confirmed Opinion of the State Council” (Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe mnenie Gosudarstvennogo soveta); when he approved a minority opinion or a project rejected by the Council entirely, then the matter was issued as a personal ukaz (imennoi ukaz). Council business of all kinds was transacted in an auxiliary organ, the State Chancery (Gosudarstvennaia kantseliariia), and was managed by the state secretary, a direct appointee of the tsar. The state secre­ tary was not a Council member, and his position was formally inde­ pendent both of the Council and its president, though he worked very closely with them. All materials going in or out of the Council passed through the Chancery and its Divisions of Law, Economy, Civil and Religious Affairs, and so on, which were parallel to the departments of the Council. Each division was headed by its own state secretary (stats-sekretar’), and in addition, the Chancery’s state secretary (Gosudarsvennyi sekretar’) had his own separate section. He appointed the di­ visional staff, which by the 1880s numbered more than double that of the Council itself. Since it was considered an excellent training ground for officials and thus the springboard to high administrative careers, the Chancery was able to attract talented men: many of its senior per­ sonnel, in fact, held ranks as high as those of Council members. Since Council members received all their information on pending projects through reports prepared by the Chancery, the influence that the Chancery could exert on the processing of ministerial proposals was enormous. This influence was all the greater since the restricted 45

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membership of the departments and of the Council as a whole made it literally impossible for individual members to deal responsibly with the ever-growing volume of business presented to the Council each year. Particularly influential in this process were the heads (statssekretari) of the Chancery divisions, since part of their task consisted in interpreting projects directly to their equivalent department chair­ man; these were often superannuated higher level officials who had been rewarded for their years of service with a prestigious post but who, for all their experience, were no longer able to cope with the work involved in handling complicated legal proposals." In addition to preparing preliminary reports, the Chancery was re­ sponsible for keeping records of all Council business, particularly Council deliberations. These were preserved in the form of journals (zhurnaly) from which the memoranda intended for the tsar were ex­ tracted. The journals contained, for each project, a justification for its presentation, a detailed though not exact (these were not verbatim transcripts) account of the course of debate, and a statement of the disposition made on the matter. If agreement was not unanimous, a maximum of two opinions could be appended giving a record of op­ posing views on the project; additional opinions, when such existed, were recorded separately in a supplement to the journal, as was also a statement of the project in its final revised form. In the case of a unanimous opinion the journal editor was allowed a good deal of freedom in his record of deliberations in the depart­ ments, but when there occurred a split opinion he was held to a higher standard of literal accuracy and was expected to give equal play both in length and in emphasis to both sides of the debate. Good editors were highly prized and well rewarded, and in Petersburg the journals, for all their stilted prose—or perhaps because of it—were famed as models of bureaucratic formalism.12 Upon completion the journals were sent directly to the Council archives; the tsar saw them only as they were excerpted in the memoranda. Because of the Council Chancery’s expertise in this kind of work, it often performed similar preparatory and recording services for a va­ riety of interministerial committees and commissions that had no con­ nection with Council business. In this way it established itself both as a kind of resource center and as a power base that grew steadily in im­ portance over the course of the nineteenth century, with its staff of experts versed in technical and legal complexities increasingly serving the needs and providing research information and advice not only to the Council, but also to the government at large. As Yaney has 46

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pointed out, the Chancery came in this way to play increasingly the role of interministerial coordinator within the administration, a role that the Council Chancery shared with other chanceries as a charac­ teristic feature of Russian administrative development.13

Legality and Proizvol : The Rule of Law in Russia The very creation of the State Council came as testimony to a new constitutional ideal that tsarist Russia, especially since the time of Speransky, had been trying to establish. According to this conception the Russian autocracy was a monarchy absolute in all respects, but still a monarchy ruled by law and distinct both from the despotic states and constitutional monarchies of Europe and from the Muscovite state to which it was legitimate and logical heir. If this sounds like a notion in itself contradictory, combining assertions of unlimited absolutism with regular—and thus regulating—process, that is no more than a reflection of the actual situation in which the empire operated for more than a century. It was, further, a conception of the autocracy affirmed repeatedly by the autocrats and their leading statesmen, and it became a dogma at the very foundation of Russian public law in the nineteenth century. The core of the contradiction and the problems that ensued from it can be found succinctly if confusingly stated in the fundamental laws (redaction of 1832), which provided a constitu­ tional framework for the Russian Empire. According to the very first article, “the emperor of Russia is an autocratic and unlimited mon­ arch. God Himself commands that his supreme authority be obeyed not only from fear, but also from conscience.” And Article 47 states no less unequivocally that “the Russian Empire is governed on the firm basis of positive laws, statutes, and establishments emanating from the autocratic power.”14 Article 1 thus proclaims the unlimited authority of the autocratic emperor and demands total submission to his power, while Article 47 proclaims just as firmly that the principle of legality or conformity to law (zakonnost’) is a fundamental feature of the governmental system. This meant that the unlimited monarch was under obligation to limit himself—and this was just what the tsars refused to do, or even to consider. Although to all appearances the autocrat had undertaken, 47

T sar and C ouncil

by the very promulgation of Article 47, to observe established laws, there existed nowhere any guarantee that he would not willfully and arbitrarily violate or abrogate laws of his own making, since he him­ self was above the law, not bound by it, nor, indeed, responsible to anyone or anything beyond himself.15 Moreover, the exercise of such arbitrariness or proizvol was not only an ever-present possibility but actually a basic feature of the system. The practice of proizvol was part of the modus operandi of the Russian autocracy on the fully convinc­ ing grounds that consistency and adherence to principles of law would deprive the autocrat of his (arbitrary) freedom to choose; at the same time, through the development of an expectati jn of regularity and order, consistency could lead to the development of institutions with the strength to stand up to the monarch. In brief, though the autocrats continued throughout the nineteenth century to pay lip ser­ vice to the ideal of a government of law, they followed this ideal more in the breach than the observance, clearly preferring a government of men to one of laws. The proclaimed legality of the state administration, then, contin­ ued to depend on the good will of the monarch, and the potential confrontation between legality and despotism expressed in the ten­ sion between Articles 1 and 47 remained a constant feature of the sys­ tem. But as if this were not enough, the potential for conflict expressed there was repeated in a whole series of parallel relationships within the lawmaking system.16 In the first place, there was no hard and fast distinction between what was called formally a law and what was an administrative decree, or ukaz.17 The State Council had been created at least in part to help clarify this distinction and to buttress the system of procedural legal­ ity associated with the enactment of laws. Officially, at least, the dis­ tinctive feature of a law was that it had been debated in the Council before being confirmed by the tsar. This was expressed in Article 50 of the fundamental laws (1832): “All legal projects are to be examined in the State Council and submitted to the emperor’s discretion; only by the action of the autocratic power can they be given the intended implementation.” And Article 53 of the document establishing the State Council states that the formula according to which this “in­ tended implementation” was to be expressed would include the words “after having heard the opinion of the State Council.” This harmless-seeming formula of tsarist legality became a major point of controversy when it was seized upon by some of Speransky’s contemporaries (notably N. M. Karamzin) as implying a limitation on 48

T he C o u n c il : S tructure and R ole

the absolute power of the autocrat. In fact, neither in practice nor in theory did the wording of the formula in any way restrict the auto­ crat’s prerogative to pay no attention to the advice or opinions given him; it merely said that he had “heard”—not even “listened”—to them. It is significant, though, of the touchiness that surrounded this issue of limitation—even the most minute limitation—on total and complete arbitrary exercise of power that the controversy over the meaning of this formula was one of the factors involved in Speransky’s fall from favor around 1812; indeed, as a concession to the con­ servatives the phrase was omitted entirely from the revisions in the terms of establishment issued in 1842.18 In any case, according to Article 53 of the fundamental laws, an “opinion of the State Council” was only one of many alternatives ac­ cording to which a law might be formulated: “Laws are issued in the form of codes [ulozheniia], statutes [ustavy], establishments [uchrezhdeniia], charters [gramoty], ordinances [polozheniia], instructions [nakazy], manifestos [manifesty], ukazes, opinions of the State Council [mneniia Gosudarstvennogo soveta], and reports [doklady] vouchsafed the em­ peror’s confirmation.” All this may well seem confusing, for confusion abounded in the fundamental laws: while Article 50 implies that it was normal to process legal projects through the State Council, Arti­ cle 53 just as clearly implies that this procedure was far from obliga­ tory and, indeed, may not even have been the norm. And in fact, at various periods it became a commonplace for tsars to bypass the State Council by one means or another. An imperial order of November 25, 1851 made it possible to circumvent the State Council altogether with respect to ministerial reports by allowing the tsar to issue a direct con­ firmation of any project that touched upon several ministries at once; not surprisingly, few projects failed to meet this criterion.19 At other times administrative rulings with the force and scope of law were is­ sued by ministers with the tsar’s approval. In addition, the tsar could, at his pleasure, have laws processed through organs other than the State Council; during the time of Alexander III, for instance, the various ordinances concerned with state security, the press, and Jews were confirmed and enacted after having been pushed through the Committee of Ministers. And the confusion continues, for there ex­ isted a mirror-image situation with respect to the repeal of laws. Ac­ cording to Articles 72 and 73 of the fundamental laws, a law was to be considered in force until it had been abolished by the confirmation of a superseding law and, further, such abolition could not take place except through the same procedure used for its composition, that 49

T sar and C ouncil

is, through the State Council. But though this wording might have seemed to confirm the Council’s involvement in this second funda­ mental aspect of the legislative process, this was, again, far from the case in practice, and the tsars used irregular channels to abrogate laws perhaps even more often than to promulgate them. Throughout the nineteenth century repeated efforts were made, all of them unsuccessful, to clarify this situation. Whatever attempts were made to introduce regularity of procedure into legislation unavoid­ ably ran head-on into the most basic notion at the foundation of auto­ cratic government: that it was above all the will of the tsar, whether expressed through formal legislation or through an imperial com­ mand, personal ukaz, or evén oral communication, that had the force of law and that this expression of will superseded anything that ex­ isted previously and was subject to no constraint. What it came down to, then, was that a whole series of conflicting and contradictory norms and procedures governed legislative process in the empire. While on the one hand forces within the autocratic sys­ tem—sometimes including the tsar himself—were striving toward an order of regularity and procedural legality, on the other the autocrat ignored his own laws whenever it suited his whim, and frequently did so even while stressing that the empire, its organs, and its agents were governed on a firm basis of law. In essence, the situation never changed from that described by Raeff: “In the final analysis the source of all authority and of all favors remained the arbitrary and unchallenge­ able personal power of the autocrat. Such a situation served to under­ mine the very raison d’être of legal and bureaucratic order. It also was at the root of the failures of many attempts at fundamental political reform and of the search for a Rechtsstaat."2"

Evolution of the State Council,

1810-1881 From the preceding we can see that at no time during the period un­ der discussion was the participation of the State Council in the legisla­ tive process mandatory under all circumstances. At best one can say that though it was normal to process laws through the State Council, it was not obligatory: the State Council had not prerogatives, but func­ tions, and the empire had not a legislative process, but a pretense of 50

T he C o u n cil : S tructure and R ole

one. Thus in order to try to understand the role that the Council was able to carve out for itself, it will be useful to look at the dynamics of the institution as it evolved a tradition for itself. The very fact of the Council’s existence over the decades ensured some consolidation of its role and function in the state system. An examination of the evolution of the State Council will make possible some broader generalizations about the nature and operation of the Russian autocratic system as we set the stage for a detailed examination of the interaction between the Council and that system during the reign of Alexander III. As an organ of the autocracy, the State Council could never go be­ yond the outer limits set by any given tsar—and what the tsars al­ lowed varied widely not only between but also within reigns.21 From the beginning of its existence, the State Council felt the extent to which its role was limited by the tsar’s sufferance, for its role as a legis­ lative assembly was gradually and steadily undermined to the point that by the last years of its founder’s reign its legislative functions had disappeared almost entirely. Alexander’s failure to implement the major body of Speransky’s reforms meant also the failure to correct the main structural weakness of the central governing apparatus, namely, the lack of an institutionalized division of functions among various government agencies—whose duties were in any case usually vaguely defined from the beginning. Troubles began almost immediately: as early as 1810, the very year of its constitution, the State Council began to get involved in judicial cases, acting as an arbiter when the Senate could not agree. Just as quickly, Speransky objected, complaining in a report to the tsar that the Council “had been established not for the solution of judicial problems, but to give a basic form and framework of regularity to a legislative process that had heretofore had none, and thus provide the process of legislation with an aspect of permanence, solidity, and uni­ formity.”22 Alexander paid little heed to this remonstrance, and for the remainder of his reign—and, indeed, for the remainder of the nineteenth century—the Council continued to play a judicial role. The real challenge, though, came not from the Council’s usurpation of the duties of the Senate, but rather from the Committee of Minis­ ters’ usurpation of the functions of the State Council. The Committee of Ministers had come into existence in 1802 as a byproduct of the creation of the ministerial system, which was itself the product of Alexander’s request that ministers coordinate policies and consult with each other before reporting to him.23 It was almost in the nature of things that such a committee, with powers potentially so 51

T sar and C ouncil

broad, should rise to preeminence in governmental affairs unless it was carefully circumscribed. As the single most powerful organ of government, the Committee began to take on at will legislative and judicial as well as executive functions. With the promulgation of an organizing statute in 1812 the existence of the Committee was for­ malized, while at the same time any definition of its functions was left unclear: the result was that the Committee continued to decide any and all matters it deemed suitable—and its definition of suitable was not narrow. The importance of the Committee of Ministers had its origin in sev­ eral factors. Alexander himself, or rather, the absence of Alexander, played a significant role. Because of his involvement in the war with France and his consequent frequent and prolonged absences from the capital, Alexander helped to strengthen the Committee, since it had control of virtually the whole governmental apparatus when he was gone. All this could hardly have happened, it is worth pointing out, had Alexander instituted Speransky’s program of reform. Under its pro­ visions a governing senate, not the Committee of Ministers, would have control over ministers. What Alexander did instead was to allow the old Senate—which retained its judicial function—to come under the control of the minister of justice, who was its presiding officer. In this instance, as in others, the sincerity of the tsar’s adherence to prin­ ciples of legality became increasingly suspect. By the last decade of Alexander’s rule, the heyday of the Commit­ tee of Ministers had also passed. By that time Alexander had lost all interest in the Committee—as, indeed, in all the other supreme or­ gans and virtually everything else governmental.24 During this period strong personalities among the individual ministers increasingly as­ sumed roles of importance and usurped the authority of the supreme organs, with the result that Alexander would more and more often confirm laws on the basis of ministerial reports alone, with no discus­ sion in either the Committee of Ministers or the State Council. As a result the State Council ceased to exercise legislative functions, and over the course of the last years of Alexander’s rule it became little more than a clearing house for any and all kinds of matters that the Committee of Ministers, the Senate, or various individual ministers could not or did not want to handle. This atrophy of the State Council was acknowledged by the first in a long line of secret committees instituted by Alexander’s successor, Nicholas I, the Committee of December 6, 1826. But though its 52

T he C o u n cil : S tructure and R ole

report recommended a reaffirmation of the consultative-legislative function of the State Council, Nicholas, as was his wont, kept his own counsel. He tended to regard the Council as little more than an ob­ stacle, potential or actual, to his will—or, as he once rather scornfully expressed it, “Really, when I decide something is useful and ben­ eficial, do I first have to ask without fail for the agreement of the Council?” As it happens, he was told in reply that he did not have to ask for the agreement of the Council, but for its opinion, and that he should either observe the law that established the Council or abolish it alto­ gether. This rather forceful statement came from Prince I. V. Vasil’chikov, then president of the State Council, during a conversation in which he asked the tsar to submit a particular legislative project to the Council before confirmation. That Vasil’chikov himself carried a great name is not beside the point; during the first forty or so years of its operation the Council included a significant number of the greatest family names in the empire, and it was largely on the basis of their individual weight and position that the Council was able to establish authority for itself during these decades. Some of these proud men displayed great independence of mind even when confronted by the imposing autocratic presence of Nicholas I. With their connections in the court, the Guards regiments, and the country as a whole, they could with some justice be regarded as representative of that elite stratum of Russian society to which the autocracy was at this time closely tied and whose opinion the tsar could not completely ignore.25 Nicholas eventually did submit the project brought up by Vasil’chi­ kov to the scrutiny of the Council, and during the remainder of his rule the State Council received more respect for its legislative func­ tion from this most determined and dutiful of all the Russian tsars (and one much maligned in comparisons to his more hypocritical and arbitrary but personally more charming and attractive brother Alex­ ander). Subsequently Nicholas saw to it that the Council participated fully in the deliberation of such important laws as the University Charter of 1835 and the Municipal Reform Act of 1846, and he fre­ quently, if not invariably, submitted legislative projects that had been worked out in other organs to the State Council for a final recommen­ dation. Such respect for the State Council’s statutory role did not pre­ vent the diminution of Council authority during the last years of Nicholas’s rule, as many of its legislative functions were usurped by the tsar’s own bureaucracy and particularly by his ministers. Many of the more forceful personalities among the ministers pur53

T sar and C ouncil

posefully avoided submitting their projects to the scrutiny of the Council, claiming in excuse the prerogative of unlimited autocracy and accusing the Council of playing at parliament. Nicholas sup­ ported such moves by confirming numerous projects on the basis of ministerial reports alone; after this he would often submit the already approved project to the Council with the order that it be accepted as it stood or with a statement giving his expectation of the outcome of de­ bate.26 When for some reason he felt it desirable to avoid even this kind of scrutiny, he made use of one or another agency of his personal bureaucracy to work out crucial pieces of legislation; thus, for in­ stance, a good many projects were handled by the ever proliferating divisions of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancery or by one of his specially created secret committees and commissions. Ironically, the business of many of these committees and commissions was trans­ acted in the Chancery of the State Council even while the Council it­ self played no role in their deliberations. But if Nicholas was an autocrat of the old model, an autocrat’s auto­ crat to the core, and one who brooked no interference with his pre­ rogatives, still his part in the development of a Russian legal order was not entirely negative. For even if Nicholas often chose to bypass the State Council, still it was under his rule that the role of the Council was recognized and made regular. In the 1820s and 1830s, under the direction of the rehabilitated and ubiquitous Speransky, the single greatest achievement of Nicholas’s reign, one that had eluded all his predecessors, was accomplished: Russian law was codified by the spe­ cially created Second Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chan­ cery. The codification of laws represented an important step in the movement toward a legal order in Russia, and this worked to the ben­ efit of the State Council.27 By these steps Nicholas did rather more than his brother Alexander to lay the foundation for an autocracy es­ tablished “on a firm basis of positive laws”; he established a set of in­ stitutions and procedures on which his successors, if they chose to take advantage of the opportunity, could build. Nicholas’ son and heir, Alexander II, was ready to do just that. Even though he also resorted to the customary procedure of setting up his own committees to bypass the bureaucracy when he found it expedient to do so, Alexander II began his major efforts at reform with a commitment to use the existing governmental institutions. In his first ceremonial speech before the State Council on February 19, 1855, Alexander appealed to that body as “the supreme organ of the state, which must set an example of everything noble, useful, and 54

T he C o u n cil : S tructure and R ole

honest in the period of difficulty and uncertainty ahead.”28 And he was as good as his implied word in giving the Council meaningful work to do. During the first eighteen years of his reign, the State Council was accorded a major role in the preparation and formula­ tion of the Great Reforms, even when they had to be forced through by the personal pressure of the tsar.29 Alexander’s decision to push for reform was supported by a grow­ ing number of reformist officials and members of the educated pub­ lic, people who were committed in principle to the regularization of a rule of law under the autocracy and who saw the State Council as the institution in which the legislative function of the empire should be concentrated. The Council’s close association with the Great Reforms substantially raised its prestige and underscored its role as the tsar’s most important advisory body. The actual working out of legislation connected with the Great Re­ forms was done by a variety of commissions and committees under the State Council’s authority. These commissions were established to provide information, special expertise, and clerical assistance. They were composed both of acting Council members and of other bureau­ crats, usually of lesser rank, who were thought to possess the knowl­ edge and initiative necessary for the execution of far-reaching re­ forms. The first of these committees, immediately dubbed the Secret Committee, was founded in 1856 with the task of providing guide­ lines for the emancipation of the serfs. It was headed by Alexander’s brother Konstantin, who became the main proponent of and driving force behind the official reform movement. In 1858 Konstantin became chairman of the successor body to the Secret Committee, the Chief Committee on Peasant Affairs, which worked until 1882 to supervise the settlement of affairs during the actual process of emancipation. Subordinated to the Main Committee were the Editorial Commis­ sions (formed in 1859) charged with the work of drafting the neces­ sary statutes. The Editorial Commissions submitted their proposed legislation to the Main Committee in i860; from there the draft pro­ posals were passed on after further revision to the General Assembly of the State Council for final deliberation. For the judiciary reform of 1864 a similar process was followed, but in this case the role of the Editorial Commissions was played by the Chancery of the Council, which was charged with primary responsi­ bility for working out the outline for judicial reform that came to be known as the basic principles. To this purpose interested and experi55

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enced officials, many of them trained in law, assembled in the Council Chancery to draft guidelines and to provide the Council with advice on judicial matters. In 1862 the Chancery completed its work and submitted the basic principles to a special subcommission composed of reformers from the Chancery together with other trained person­ nel; many of these (such as M. N. Liuboshchinskii, M. E. Kovalevskii, and E. A. Peretts) were later appointed to the Council proper, where they played an important role—as did the formulators of the peasant reform—in fending off the attempts at undoing their work in the suc­ ceeding reign. The judicial statutes were prepared in preliminary form by this subcommission and sent at the end of 1863 to the com­ bined Departments of Law, Civil and Religious Affairs, and Economy for final deliberation. Of all the Great Reforms, the resultant Judici­ ary Statute of 1864 might well be considered the most far-reaching and consistent and also the one most attuned to the liberal aspirations of the first decade of Alexander’s reign: consequently and naturally, it was also the one most subject to attack in the later period of reaction when the State Council itself came under attack from all sides. By that time—the 1880s—the State Council had established for it­ self a central, if still not quite indispensable, position in the affairs of government. In something on the order of half a century the State Council, and particularly its Chancery, had become a center for pro­ fessional expertise on a broad array of subjects ranging from arcane matters of nationality and ethnography to the running of the rail­ roads that were being built in increasing number. Its personnel had undergone a concomitant shift; gone for the most part were the mag­ nates and princes, their places taken by men of lesser means and greater ambition, officials who felt themselves in some measure to be both professional civil servants and members of a common body with its own tradition, loyalties, and esprit de corps. In 1865, no doubt partly to keep the Council under personal and familial control, Alexander II had appointed his brother Konstantin to the Council presidency. The choice was a happy one, and Konstan­ tin’s tenure ended only with the accession of the new tsar in 1881. Thanks to Konstantin’s relationship with the tsar and his forceful, even domineering personality, the State Council suffered little during Konstantin’s long presidency from interference in its affairs either by ministerial staffs or even by the tsar himself. By the end of this period, a certain de facto consensus had arisen with regard to the Council’s scope of activity and its role in the government, a set of traditions and general rules that had little formal foundation in law but considerable 56

T he C o u n cil : S tructure and R ole

force in practice. Among these was the expectation that major legisla­ tion must customarily be processed through the State Council and that in this process the day-by-day legislative proceedings of the Council were to be immune from direct interference on the part of the tsar or his ministers. The Council, in turn, had built up a strong legislative record and with it its own position as an organ of legitimacy and legality. A consensus prevailed among higher officials that for the tsar to circumvent the Council majority by approving a minority opin­ ion constituted an infringement of the principle of legality, even though it was clearly the tsar’s prerogative to do so.30 This state of affairs, in which the Council bode fair to become what its enemies most feared, a kind of quasi-parliament, was the result of an uneasy equilibrium among many forces. The nature of that equi­ librium and the forces working to undo it are examined in the follow­ ing chapters; for the present it is sufficient to point out that the autoc­ racy had become dependent on State Council expertise, particularly the expertise of the departments and the Chancery, in a way that went beyond the autocrat’s use of the Council to express his good inten­ tions with regard to legal order and procedure. The empire had be­ come too complicated for one man to run, even with the help of any number of magnates or favorites; too many questions demanded ex­ pert opinion, too many matters required not just consent or denial, but informed consent—and increasingly the State Council had be­ come one of the main sources of expert information and opinion. Still the situation was anything but immutable, particularly since the Coun­ cil’s status derived from informally established rules, which were themselves less rules than simply matters of custom and tradition that could all too easily be violated. Konstantin’s presidency had contributed a good deal to stabilizing the Council’s role, but his tenure could not last forever—though its influence was long felt and served as a link to the aspirations and goals of the reform era. During the later years of Alexander’s reign Kon­ stantin had been instrumental in securing the appointment to the Council of many of his coworkers on various subcommissions during the reform period, and these men helped to keep alive the memory and spirit of the reforms. This close association of the Council with the Great Reforms raised problems in its own turn. As it became increasingly apparent that the reforms of the 186os had failed to cure the ills of society and had in­ deed led instead to new problems and perturbations, the new tsar, Al­ exander III, set out to reevaluate the policies of the previous reign 57

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with the explicit aim of undoing what he saw as the harm of the Great Reforms. At the same time, many of those who had the ear of the tsar pointed to the State Council’s work in formulating the reforms and demanded a curtailment of its functions. The Council thus entered a new and difficult stage when it was unclear what role the new tsar would allow it in the formulation of his legislative program.

CHAPTER

3 The Kitchen Cabinet: Pobedonostsev, Tolstoi, Katkov, and Meshcherskii hile Alexander had his own ideas about the State Council, he also received much advice and many proposals dealing with that institution. Some of these proposals were consonant with his own ideas, but in many cases the tsar’s view of the Council differed in sig­ nificant measure from that of his advisers, especially those who fa­ vored its abolition. Significantly, for all the inconsistencies and contra­ dictions in Alexander’s feelings about it, it seems apparent that he always recognized the importance of the Council’s function and never seriously contemplated doing without it; it was his intention, rather, to bring the runaway institution to heel. Even so positive an attitude toward the Council as this was hardly typical of many of the men closest to the new tsar, a circumstance that makes it interesting to speculate why in this case their advice carried so little weight with Alexander. The main luminaries in this body of informal advisers and sometimes formal members of government in59

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eluded K. P. Pobedonostsev, overprocurator of the Holy Synod and Alexander’s former mentor; D. A. Tolstoi, minister of interior from 1882 to 1889; M. N. Katkov, editor of the Moscow News; and V. P. Meshcherskii, a friend of Alexander’s and his older brother Nicholas’s youth and editor-publisher of the Citizen (which, were it not for the considerable subsidies, first from the tsesarevich’s pocket and later di­ rectly from the Treasury, might well not have survived or even come into existence). These men by no means constituted a united group; at best they got along poorly, and none had much sympathy for any of the others. Pobedonostsev, Tolstoi, and Katkov, to take the three who saw each other most frequently, behaved together in the manner of the goose, the pike, and the crayfish in Krylov’s fable. E. M. Feoktistov, chief of the Main Administration for Press Affairs, to whom we owe that description, has portrayed the three as generally agreed on matters of principle, but seldom able to act in concert. Katkov would get all inflamed and lose control, arguing the while that it was not enough just to reject harmful experiments and control those who wanted to change the whole political structure o f Russia; one had, rather, to display some energy; it wouldn’t do to sit with hands folded. Count Tolstoi would not know either how to begin or how to carry on the matter; he would have been happy to get anything done at all, as long as it was the right sort o f thing, but as to what this right “anything” was he had only the most unclear notion; as concerns Pobedonostsev, he remained true to himself and would only sigh deeply, complain, and raise his hands to the sky (his most beloved gesture).

A. A. Polovtsov’s story that Tolstoi told him that Katkov was “the sort of swine I don’t admit to my presence” hardly conveys any greater feeling of amicability. Even that language might be too mild, though, to describe the feelings of any of the three toward Meshcherskii, who enjoyed the general contempt of virtually all Petersburg with the sin­ gle major exception of the tsar himself.1 In principle, all four advocated recentralization of the autocracy as the single most pressing item of business, but in practice they spent more time in fulminating and intriguing against each other than in efforts to realize their ostensible goal. But despite their inability to de­ velop a common program or to act together, their advocacy of re­ centralization was to have a profound effect on the State Council and the whole course of governmental policy during the length of Alex­ ander’s thirteen-year reign. Each of the four saw the Council as at least a partial obstacle to the realization of his aims, and all four were 60

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able to impress upon Alexander separately the justice of their reserva­ tions about the Council’s loyalty to the autocratic principle, reserva­ tions that Alexander was already inclined to listen to sympathetically. Of the four, Pobedonostsev was the best known, and he has been widely portrayed as the man most responsible for the cast of domestic policy under Alexander III. The truth in this case is less spectacular than the legend, and even in 1881 Pobedonostsev’s influence on Alex­ ander was far from unlimited. He was neither the Grand Inquisitor nor, as some members of the State Council would have it, the gray eminence behind the throne.2 Pobedonostsev in practice generally found the petty matters of court intrigue, appointments, and the af­ fairs of press and censorship more to his immediate taste than distant and abstract matters of broad policy.3The real influence that Pobedo­ nostsev exerted came in greater measure from the period when as tu­ tor he had guided Alexander’s early intellectual and political develop­ ment. Though Alexander outgrew his mentor as he adapted to his role as heir apparent and then tsar, he would never forget that Pobe­ donostsev, whatever his limitations or liabilities, was a man he could trust as an unwavering and devotedly loyal supporter of both the idea and the fact of unlimited autocracy. And certainly he could not have forgotten, whatever his later attitude toward Pobedonostsev, that this man was also a relic of his past, a friend and teacher who had sup­ ported him during the crucial period of the late 1860s and his difficult adjustment to the role of tsesarevich in the 1870s. Intellectually and politically Pobedonostsev did not belong to any one group or faction in the government; neither was he anyone’s reli­ able ally. Perhaps for this reason he was always the subject of specula­ tion and of pressure exerted by a variety of individuals and groups who wanted his support and his intervention with the tsar on behalf of their proposals and projects. He did not give such support either easily or, if the truth be known, with particular success. Tolstoi could never get him to defend or endorse his program of counter-reforms as embodied in a variety of legislative projects, nor did Pobedonostsev ever fully approve of the formulation of the university statute of 1884. The only area to which Pobedonostsev was fully committed was his own vaguely formulated program to curtail the independence of the judiciary, but though he expended mighty efforts in this task, he was unable either to make his views prevail in the State Council or to persuade the tsar to adopt his program.4 Pobedonostsev was a force in government primarily because of people’s perception of the influence he could exert upon the tsar through his special relationship with 61

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him. He was not a creative or original thinker nor a forceful leader who commanded personal authority, and over the years his influence upon Alexander—never great during the latter’s maturity—increas­ ingly waned. Still he was and remains an interesting man and a psychological as well as intellectual puzzle. Dostoevsky found him worth consideration as a correspondent, and not exclusively because of his position. His intellectual bent and proclivities seemed to mirror his perpetually ill constitution and desiccated physiognomy. In another man such ready despair and pronounced negativism might have been taken for an af­ fectation; in Pobedonostsev they seemed the natural attributes of the man whom A. F. Koni once characterized as “our state pessimist.”5 He was one of those men, not infrequently encountered in Russian politi­ cal thought, whose conviction of the need for a firm, even stern, au­ thoritarian mode of governing was based in large measure on his low appraisal of the worth of humanity in general and the citizenry in par­ ticular, especially when these were acted upon by the inflammatory and corrupting twin evils of demagogic parliamentary government and a licentious free press. Government existed to be firm, and the virtue of tsarist government in particular lay in its ability to curb through benevolent authoritarian action the evils to which man was heir. Pobedonostsev’s strength as a thinker lay in his negativism; he was a critic, not a creator, and it is significant that in his whole associa­ tion with the institutions of government he proposed, with the excep­ tion of aspects of the judiciary reform, not a single memorable pro­ gram or plan of action. But, then, he did not believe in institutions, nor did he trust them. His faith lay in men and exclusively in men: they were subject to restraints and control as institutions were not. Po­ lovtsov stresses how much it was a recurrent theme with Pobedono­ stsev that institutions have no significance on their own, that every­ thing is in the men who compose them.6 If Pobedonostsev looked on society with suspicion, society returned the compliment, assigning to him credit for misdeeds far beyond the actual reach of his influence. For though he was popularly renamed Trouble Bearer (Bedonostsev) in a pun upon his name of Victory Bearer, in practice he was hardly the villainous personification of re­ action his enemies—and posterity, by and large—took him for.7 He might have wanted to be, but he had neither the power nor the will to carry it off. Konstantin Leontyev, himself a conservative thinker, though no friend of Pobedonostsev, characterized him well and fairly: “He is like a frost that hinders further decay and will allow nothing to 62

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grow. Not only is he not a creator, he is not even a reactionary, nor a regenerator, nor even a testorer. He is only a conservative in the nar­ rowest sense of the word. He is, I say, a frost, a watchman, an unventi­ lated tomb, an innocent old maid and nothing more.”8 It was Pobedonostsev’s firm conviction that the very existence of the State Council was a mistake, that it crippled the exercise of unlimited autocratic power. “One should lock it up and then throw the key in the Neva,” as he put it on one occasion.9 Given that legislative func­ tions were necessary and had to be conducted in some forum or an­ other, Pobedonostsev thought that they should be transferred entirely to the jurisdiction of the Council of Ministers, a far smaller and less independent agency than the Council and thus one that could be more easily kept under autocratic surveillance and control. When in 1885 Pobedonostsev sent to the tsar for his attention a copy of the Statute of Establishment of the Council of Ministers, State Council members immediately suspected, and were no doubt right in their suspicion, that Pobedonostsev’s intention was to encourage Alexander to insinuate into the governmental structure the Council of Ministers as a kind of supreme privy council to bypass the State Council.10 In this as in other matters Pobedonostsev played skillfully on the fears and insecurities of his sovereign and was one of those who helped convince him that resistance to his proposals was akin to treasonous intent. Further, Pobedonostsev’s suspicions of institutional proce­ dures and his constant harping about the corruption, egotism, and ambition of all bureaucrats, with the single exception of himself, helped form the cast of Alexander’s mind.11 The question of influences is not easy, and it is in the nature of things that some of the most significant influences in a person’s life must remain forever private. In the case of Alexander and Pobedono­ stsev it is difficult to say what is a matter of the older man influencing the younger, what simply a mutually reinforcing similarity of tem­ perament and outlook. Certainly Alexander the tsar was in no way the puppet or tool of Pobedonostsev, nor yet the dancer responding to the tune of a hidden piper. On the matter of the Council of Ministers, for instance, Alexander rejected Pobedonostsev’s proposal and gave a clear and reasoned justification for doing so: for him to express his opinion in such a forum would “limit review in the State Council; and [besides] the Council of Ministers consists of such a number of gov­ ernment figures that further review would be superfluous.” 12 In other words, he saw Pobedonostsev’s scheme quite clearly and consciously decided against it: regardless of what his adviser thought, the tsar 63

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himself found such “further review” useful for his own purposes and made the decision to keep it. Pobedonostsev’s direct influence on the course of government, strong though it may have been at the beginning of the reign, had more or less evaporated a few years into it. One reason for this was simply his failure to put forth regular proposals for action—his in­ stinct was all to do nothing and to hinder the action of others. But another was that Alexander, no mean judge of the uses he could make of men, had decided to do without him, and by 1889 the tsar no longer relied on him for advice. In 1892 Alexander told Sergei Witte that his long years of experience with Pobedonostsev had convinced him that though the man was an excellent critic, he could never create anything himself; Pobedonostsev had been of immense use and value to him during his own time of troubles and that of Russia; he had helped to stop the sedition rampant in 1881 and to give Russia time to collect herself. “Yet one cannot live by criticism alone,” the tsar went on, “and in this connection K. P. Pobedonostsev is no longer of use.”IS One could hardly ask for a more perceptive comment on the man or his role. The second major figure of particular influence during the early years of Alexander’s reign was Count Dmitrii Tolstoi, a distant relative of the famous Tolstoi and the head of the powerful Ministry of Inte­ rior between 1882 and 1889. Tolstoi is a complex and controversial figure, and the reasons Alexander selected him to play a central role in his administration are neither clear nor easily determined. Tolstoi’s appointment to the ministry came as a surprise even to himself, while for supporters of the reforms it was seen as an augury of trouble. Tol­ stoi had been a controversial figure during the reign of Alexander II for reasons both of personality and of policy, and he continued to stir up controversy. Like Pobedonostsev, he was distrustful of everyone around him and found this sentiment reciprocated in like measure. Even a cursory review of Tolstoi’s early administrative record, his convictions, and his personality is enough to show the complexity and controversy around this man. To begin with, little is known about his life. He came from a poor provincial gentry family and lost his father at age seven; it was perhaps his early poverty that helped to make the acquisition of wealth a major preoccupation of Tolstoi’s: he had through­ out his life the reputation for greed, and his appetite in this regard re­ mained unchecked even after a most advantageous marriage.14 Tolstoi’s future as well as his fortune was made when he was ac64

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cepted as a student at the elite lycée at Tsarskoe Selo. From that time on he made first school and then state service his home and indeed his universe. At Tsarskoe, Tolstoi already displayed one of his most en­ during traits of personality, a complete disregard and even disdain for the esteem of his fellows. He was given full opportunity to display these during his last year, which was spent in total ostracism as the result of an accusation of “immorality” he made against one of his classmates.15 He was cold and dry, a man callous and self-righteous, and possessed of a strong will. He was also intelligent and had ac­ quired the veneer of a good education; he had, incidentally, serious scholarly ambitions in history. Tolstoi shunned personal contacts and threw his energies into his work, displaying there a tremendous en­ ergy as well as efficiency and conscientiousness in his habits. This personality and manner were not of a kind to attract followers. Throughout his life Tolstoi remained a loner, and he inclined natu­ rally to rely on the tsar’s personal support and favor in preference to working out alliances to secure his ends. In this he displayed another of his prominent traits, a great persistence and stubbornness, charac­ teristics he displayed in ample measure during his defense of his leg­ islative projects in the State Council in the 1870s and again in the 1880s. M. A. Korf, who was chairman of the State Council’s Depart­ ment of Law from 1864 to 1871, characterized him then as “not with­ out talent and knowledge, but withal a terrible chatterbox who takes up an extraordinary amount of Council time on his projects, espe­ cially . . . as he is most persistent and stubborn in his opinions.” 16A. V. Golovnin, who worked under him at the Naval Ministry in the 1850s when Tolstoi was director of the chancery there and who preceded him as minister of education (and whom Tolstoi despised), said of him in a letter to D. A. Miliutin of July 1, 1882, in which he commented on Tolstoi’s appointment to Interior, that Tolstoi “is without doubt intel­ ligent, tells the truth, and likes to work.”17 Boris Chicherin, who knew Tolstoi well and disliked him, portrayed him less generously as some­ one “not too stupid and with a firm character, but a bureaucrat to the marrow, a man narrow and stubborn who sees no one except Peters­ burg circles, who hates any independent movement or the appear­ ance of freedom, and is, in addition, on top of it, devoid of all moral convictions: mean, a liar, greedy, vengeful, crafty, and ready to do anything for the attainment of his personal ends; together with that he has about him a cringing and servility of that extreme sort that is generally found pleasing by tsars, but that awakens loathing in all de65

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cent people.” 18 Such features—and most of them are attested to by other contemporaries—would serve to make any man a controversial figure. Tolstoi’s reputation as an exceptionally able administrator dates from his first years in the service. He was then one of the original “konstantinovtsy,” men who worked for Grand Duke Konstantin Niko­ laevich at the Naval Ministry in the 1850s. Konstantin had great re­ spect for Tolstoi’s talents, and continued to prize him highly as late as the i88os.19 Over the decades, Tolstoi developed into the type of the bureaucratic administrator, earning the while a sinister reputation first during his tenure as procurator of the Holy Synod (1865) and then as minister of education (1867). He ruled the Synod with an iron hand, displaying intolerance and bigotry while remaining innocent of any religious feeling. During his tenure in the Ministry of Education a program of classical studies was introduced into the secondary schools. Seen by many as the first serious step in the dismantlement of the Great Reforms, it led to such controversy that Tolstoi’s genuine achievements as minister of education were widely underestimated. He expanded educational facilities in the empire and carried through reforms that made the administration of educational policy considerably more effective than it had been. Nonetheless, his policies overall, including the introduction of a classical regimen, his advocacy of censorship, and the autocratic manner in which he ruled the ministry, led to in­ creasing calls for his removal, and in 1880, during the crisis of autoc­ racy he was dismissed from all administrative responsibilities.20 Almost nothing is known about the evolution of Tolstoi’s political views. From school days on he was always an outsider; since the ma­ jority of his associates tended to be liberal and reform minded, he might have been expected to move in another direction. One can speculate that the insecurity of his origins led him to overvalue sta­ bility and security, or that the considerable landed interests he acquired with his marriage influenced his opposition to the emancipation of the serfs, but these factors cannot be taken as the only determinants of his views. What is known is that by the 1860s Tolstoi had developed into a bureaucratic traditionalist with strong conservative leanings. He was a dedicated servitor of the autocrat and believed in the need for an undivided autocratic power to assure the welfare of the em­ pire. Some of his opposition to the Great Reforms can be ascribed to the fact that by introducing autonomous entities into the structure of government, they undermined the principle of total autocratic con­ trol. In administrative matters Tolstoi laid great stress on Russian his66

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torical precedent, particularly the precedent of his favorite historical period, the eighteenth century and the age of Catherine II. Tolstoi’s interest in the fate of the Russian landed gentry may also have been as much connected with his historical avocation as with his own status as a large, though for the most part absentee, landowner; in any case, his tenure as minister of interior became identified, mistakenly, with pol­ icies seen both by contemporaries and by later scholars as a gentry re­ action.21 While it is true enough that Tolstoi was sympathetic to the plight of the gentry and was interested in improving its legal as well as its economic status, this was because he regarded the gentry as the best qualified and most virtuous of state servitors.22 His support of its interests was thus linked to his perception that what could benefit the gentry would redound to the benefit of the state whose servant he also was. Not surprisingly, Tolstoi, who had been totally disgraced in 1880, felt an overweening sense of vindication when he was called back a year later by Alexander III to serve in the crucial Ministry of Interior. Interestingly, it was rumored that Alexander III had little personal taste for Tolstoi and had even helped Loris-Melikov engineer his re­ moval from Education.23 Tolstoi savored his moment of victory and, it is said, behaved at his initial audience with the new tsar with a most uncustomary absence of deference. According to Golovnin, who based his account on that of a close associate of Tolstoi’s—and the story is corroborated by others—Tolstoi brought it to Alexander’s at­ tention that he (Tolstoi) remained an unpopular man. Alexander an­ swered that he based his appointments on his estimation of a man’s use to Russia and that in this popularity was of no importance. Tolstoi rejoined by saying that, even so, Alexander had no idea what kind of man he was. The tsar expressed his surprise at this and said that, quite the contrary, he knew him well, since he had read his reports and memoranda to the late tsar. Tolstoi explained that this was not what he had in mind: Alexander might know him as minister of education, but he had no idea what his convictions might be on questions of ad­ ministration of interior. As Golovnin has reported it, Tolstoi went on to explain his ideas in more or less the following fashion. “Will it please the tsar,” Tolstoi asked, to have as minister a man who is convinced that the reforms o f the past rule were a mistake? That we used to have a quiet, prosperous popula­ tion living under the guidance o f the more educated o f our people? That it used to be that the various branches o f the government did not 67

T sar and C ouncil interfere with each other, while the agents o f the government directed local affairs under the control o f other supreme agents o f that same governmental authority? And that now there has appeared in place o f all that a ruined, impoverished, drunk, and dissatisfied peasantry, a ruined and dissatisfied nobility, courts that continually interfere in the workings o f the police, and 600 zemstvo gossip parlors that stand in op­ position to the government? Thus . . . the task o f the minister o f inte­ rior must consist not in the further encouragement but in the paralysis o f all opposition to the government.21

Tolstoi must surely have known that in making such a declaration to the new tsar he was hardly taking his life in his hands: Alexander’s sympathies were widely enough known. And indeed Alexander was suitably impressed by Tolstoi’s profession of faith and found no cause for complaint in the expression of views that were close to his own. According to Valuev, though, Tolstoi went rather farther than this and found the temerity to remind the tsar that his strength was based on the strength of the Russian nobility. “Your ancestors,” he is supposed to have told Alexander, “created Russia indeed, but they created her with our hands.” The tsar, according to Valuev’s story, “blushed and said he had not forgotten this.”25 Whatever Valuev’s source, for Tol­ stoi to have had the self-assurance to lecture the tsar in this manner would have been most uncharacteristic of a man whose more usual behavior was a deference verging on outright cowardice and fear. What was not at all uncharacteristic, though, was for Tolstoi to bring his feelings to the tsar: temperamentally unable to solicit support or win converts to his projects, he relied instead on his direct access to Alexander as an aid in swaying potential allies to his side. Tolstoi and Alexander soon developed so close a working relation­ ship that within the councils of government Tolstoi could be said to be functioning as an alter ego to the tsar. In many ways the two men were a happy match. Tolstoi was close to Alexander in more than his funda­ mental ideas about Russia and her destiny, for both in personality and in character the one seemed complement to the other. Tolstoi was al­ most certainly more intelligent than his master, but he contained him­ self in the tsar’s presence, acting here in sharp contrast to Alexander’s first appointment as minister of interior, the arrogant and flamboyant N. P. Ignat’ev. Like Alexander himself, Tolstoi was neither an activist nor given to demonstrativeness; he worked quietly and his air of tran­ quillity seemed to have a comforting effect on Alexander after all the turmoil of the crisis of autocracy. Both men shared a devotion to duty 68

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and work for their own sake, and combined this with immense stub­ bornness and distrust of those around them. As he grew into office, though, Tolstoi became more sensitive to the negative reactions, and thus opposition, that he aroused in his col­ leagues, and he learned to stress the importance of interministerial cooperation in the pursuit of his ends. Whether as a result of growing experience or, as some charged, because of personal cowardice, first during his sponsorship of education projects in the 1870s and then again during the introduction of his projects for the counter-reforms in the 1880s, Tolstoi took the time to make an effort to secure agree­ ment from his colleagues in other ministries.26 The attempt slowed down the introduction of his measures because of the scope of dis­ agreement that arose from such conferences, and led to the drafting of significant changes in the projects. In several instances Tolstoi went so far as to approve changes in certain provisions (withdrawing, for instance, from the land captain project, the provision abolishing the justice of the peace) without informing the tsar and in contradiction of his specific expectations. Still, whatever Tolstoi’s concessions, his at­ tempts at securing consensus were seldom crowned with success; and in cases in which he found it impossible to attract support for his mea­ sures, his instinct and practice were to go directly to the tsar for as­ surances of support and then stubbornly push his projects through with complete disdain for their or his own popularity.27 Tolstoi was not a man of original ideas, and his plans for concrete action were few, but his approach, which emphasized links with Rus­ sia’s historical past and proposed a limited, practical, and piecemeal re-forming of the reforms that was quite unlike the abstract theoriz­ ing of the liberals Alexander detested, appealed to the tsar. All of this helped make Alexander feel at ease with Tolstoi in their official rela­ tions; on the personal side no relationship existed at all, and their contacts were based on service and duty exclusively. What the two men had in common rather than friendship was the conviction that the reforms of the past reign had been a mistake and had led to the disorders of the present day. Tolstoi’s first concern upon taking office, as he told Ambassador H. L. von Schweinitz, could be expressed in one word: order.28 His second, it soon became clear, was the reconstitution of the autocracy on its old basis. In this regard Tolstoi fulfilled Alexander’s foremost requirement: that his minister be not only a true servant of the autoc­ racy but also a man who believed absolutely in the principle of autoc69

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racy. About this the tsar had no second thoughts, and on his own ini­ tiative referred to Tolstoi as the “last of the Mohicans” in defense of the autocracy.29 For all these reasons and others that we can only guess at, Tolstoi came to occupy the major role among Alexander I ll’s ministers and advisers, a role similar to that played in the previous reign by la. I. Rostovtsev during the preparation of the Emancipation Statute and later by D. A. Miliutin and Loris-Melikov. Throughout the tsarist pe­ riod, autocrats had in this wise picked out individual members from among their bureaucratic entourage and, because of their personal qualities and a special confidence they felt in them, allowed them to exercise considerable influence. These men received their authority in the government for a variety of reasons, including the autocrat’s desire to distance himself from the hurly-burly of day-to-day politics, but above all because they were needed and because the tsars were convinced that they would not misuse their authority. They were em­ ployed to provide greater cohesion within the government and were at times trusted with the formulation and execution of wide-ranging plans from whose negative aspects the autocrat himself could remain conveniently apart. For Alexander, Tolstoi was just such a man. That Tolstoi was per­ sonally unpopular may well have been a recommendation, for the an­ tipathy felt toward Tolstoi by antagonistic elements in the higher bu­ reaucracy would help to divert hostility from his policies to the man. And with Tolstoi as scapegoat, Alexander himself could remain above the fray. He knew that being thrust into such a position would pro­ voke no resentment in his minister—after all, he had expected as much when he assumed his post; and indeed Tolstoi took pride in his very unpopularity. All of this led Alexander to entrust to Tolstoi the primary role in the attempts made during his reign to bring greater cohesion into the administration of government, just as later he was to give analogous power in another realm to his minister of finance, Ser­ gei Witte. Tolstoi assumed his new position with the conviction that the State Council would be a center of opposition to his plans. Not only did he distrust his former associates, the reformers whose work he regarded as a major mistake, but he had a more personal animus as well, for he well remembered the opposition he had encountered in the Council during his years as minister of education under Alexander II. As a result, he did his best to blacken the Council in the eyes of the tsar, accusing it of wanting to play parliament, that is, of wanting a consti70

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tution, and, according to one source, even going so far as to charge that the Council was but “an assembly of revolutionaries striving to put limitations on the autocracy.”30 It is difficult to tell just how much credence Alexander gave such accusations, but certainly he was hardly loath to repeat them. Tolstoi’s reward for such loudly voiced suspicions was the unlimited confidence of the tsar. Others saw the situation dif­ ferently, and one contemporary described him simply as “narrow­ minded and cowardly in his support of the monarchical principle.”31 In his attacks upon the State Council, Tolstoi could count on the willing help of the two foremost journalists of reaction of his day, Mi­ khail Katkov and Prince Vasilii Meshcherskii, the last of the closed group of Alexander’s political confidants and advisers with whom we shall deal in detail. Katkov had close ties within the government and was kept informed of pending affairs by ideological allies like Tolstoi, Pobedonostsev, and Feoktistov, not to mention a much larger number of smaller fry. Feoktistov’s relationship with Katkov was very much a matter of mutual back scratching. As head of the Main Administra­ tion of Press Affairs at the Ministry of Interior (and thus a subordi­ nate of Tolstoi’s), Feoktistov had the principal responsibility for most matters of press control and censorship. He held a law degree from Moscow University and during the period of the Great Reforms had been considered a liberal. Like Katkov, who had also been an early liberal, Feoktistov turned sharply conservative in reaction to the Pol­ ish uprising and its aftermath. He had many connections in all areas of government, for his responsibilities as press lord extended wide and deep. Because of his press sources he was able to feed a great deal of information to Katkov. He then turned around and fed it back to the tsar through the prism of the daily press reports he was required to prepare for Alexander’s private “Imperial Review”—which, natu­ rally, leaned heavily on material excerpted from the Moscow News.32 Katkov was keenly aware of his direct editorial access to the highest circles of government, and he claimed with considerable accuracy that Alexander read his paper every day. Though Katkov had delusions about the extent of his influence, there is a certain validity to his boast, made in a letter to Alexander III, that “my paper was not simply a newspaper, it was an organ of state activity. In it government affairs were not merely reflected, but decided. My work was state service without salary, decoration, or court dress.”33 Since one of Katkov’s frequently reiterated themes was Pobedonostsev’s favorite charge that the State Council was a pseudoparliament whose very existence meant a limitation of autocracy, it is likely that 71

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even had Feoktistov not existed, Pobedonostsev would have seen to it that Alexander had ample exposure to Katkov’s ideas, at least insofar as they were mirror to his own. Pobedonostsev’s opinion of Katkov’s journalism was so high, in fact, that he exerted his utmost to keep Kat­ kov in his role of editor and out of the position of minister of educa­ tion, which Katkov greatly desired; Katkov’s reaction to the compli­ ment need only be imagined.34 The usual picture of Katkov, Pobedonostsev, and their associates in “black reaction” has shown them as more like self-serving scoundrels than high-minded idealists. And yet one can hardly help shake one’s head in puzzlement over some of the fuzzy-headed quixoticism that comes through Katkov’s articles. One finds a longing for a world far removed from strife, from dissension, from politics: “Is it right,” Kat­ kov asked in an editorial of May 6, 1886, “to want the parliamentary play of majority and minority to penetrate into our State Council? That members of the State Council, who have been called together in confidence by our monarch to advise him, should make over their high appointment into the role of members of parties, groups, and coalitions subordinated not to reason but to the command of lead­ ers?” The tone is so impossibly high-minded that the sequel, with the editor’s attempt to explain such behavior, can only come as a shock. He knows, he says, the reason this sort of thing has come to pass, and it lies in something akin to treason, for “there exists a party that is dreaming of turning the State Council into a parliament, with the aim of trying to limit the power of the supreme lawgiver.”35 One is tempted to find in this combination, so typical of Katkov, nothing more than a cynical attempt to appeal simultaneously to the highest aspirations and basest fears of his readers—or of his Reader. Yet there is something here more genuine than that, something that has its echoes in a long tradition of Russian thought, theological as well as political, that combines a total innocence of experience and an accompanying hyperidealistic high-mindedness with a cynicism and callousness about practice that seems to appall, in particular, prag­ matic and quite unidealistic observers from the more legalistic West. One sees it, for instance, in Dostoevsky’s ability to level the charge of caesaro-papism at the Western church—and to do this in all serious­ ness and without the slightest trace of irony—while praising the inde­ pendence of an Orthodoxy that had long since uttered its death rattle in the iron embrace of the autocratic and most Holy Russian state. One sees it, too, in the widespread Russian distrust— Berdyaev dis­ cusses it well, and in our own day Solzhenitsyn is its prime exemplar— 72

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of legalistic norms that can sap the breath of life and mercy and com­ passion from action based on harsh justice alone. It is too easy to look at what we take to be Russian reality and then dismiss the impulse behind such thought as little more than a cover for arbitrariness, self-aggrandizement, and even evil. And certainly there was some of this, perhaps much of it. At the same time, it is worth bearing in mind the real attraction that the ideal held for many who were by no means the worst in the realm. For the fact is that at no time did the supporters of autocracy justify arbitrariness or unlimited power simply on the grounds that such was the way of the world and might makes right. Their appeal rather was to the attractive notion, quite acceptable on theoretical grounds, that a system of due process, useful though it might be to prevent harm, is impotent to effect good. How much better to rely, not on the dead letter of the law, but on the living force for good of a well-intentioned man who could exercise compassion and mercy even while making judgments that were just. Be that as it may, Katkov certainly was far from basing his ideas on high-mindedness alone, and more often than not he chose the low over the high road. One sees this, for instance, in another of his favor­ ite themes, the insinuation that reformist bureaucrats and the liberal Saint Petersburg press with which they had ties were directly linked with groups of Russian revolutionaries in exile. Katkov liked particu­ larly to play on the word “liberal,” for it was fraught with connotations offensive to the autocracy, and he made frequent and insulting refer­ ence both to the “bureaucratic liberals” and to their “liberal” press or­ gans. Among the latter his particular target was the Voice, which com­ bined its offensive politics with an even more offensive circulation four times larger than that of his own Moscow News. The influence of the Voice could be felt particularly in the early 1880s, and to such an extent that in 1882 Tolstoi refrained from shut­ ting it down for fear of the reaction among reformist officials (includ­ ing those in his own Ministry of Interior) and the educated public generally.36 Katkov had no such hesitation about either the paper or its public, and he attacked both with venom. An editorial of 1884, for instance, is not atypical. In it he attacks the State Council and “other highest government circles” for opposing the recent university statute project that had been proposed largely to abrogate university auton­ omy. The “liberals” and their “liberal press,” Katkov charged, were in league with none other than Pëtr Lavrov—one of the initiators of the populist movement—who had just written an article in the émigré press opposing the project. “It does not surprise us,” Katkov said,

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“that these enemies of the Russian state and of Russian education lend their hands in their struggle against this statute to the official lib­ erals of Saint Petersburg; these hands have already been together more than once, and their slogan is, ‘the worse, the better.’” It was a style, as the slogan reminds us, that Lenin might have learned from— and probably did. Further articles followed the same theme of stress­ ing links between the “Saint Petersburg liberals” and constitutional aspirations in “foreign parliamentarianism.”37 And if Katkov was reckless in his insinuations and attacks, there was little reason for him not to be: he knew that his royal Reader served at the same time, by his mere favor, as royal Protector. Katkov’s influence went so far that at times rumors circulated in Saint Petersburg that Alexander had appointed him to the Council— and the Council, exasperated as much by his ready ear at court as by his meddlesome articles, suggested through its president that the tsar either act on the substance of such rumors and actually give Katkov a Council appointment or else stop seeing him. Others bruited about the suggestion that the Council president resign in protest against Katkov’s attacks.38 Alexander was little affected by such noises, and he could be pre­ vailed upon to do no more than issue a few lukewarm warnings asking Katkov to tone down his charges. Council members muttered about the spread of arbitrariness and the general anarchy of governmental practice, but could do little: Alexander valued Katkov highly and found him useful.39 Katkov’s role as gadfly to the Saint Petersburg es­ tablishment Alexander could only applaud, for Katkov and his paper expressed many of Alexander’s own feelings while still serving as a screen between the tsar and the target of those feelings: hostility and resentment that might otherwise have been directed in part toward the throne were diverted to the Katkov press. Thus Alexander al­ lowed and even encouraged direct attacks on various organs of gov­ ernment, on a variety of highly placed and visible officials, and even on his ministerial staff, vicariously venting an anger and frustration he himself felt toward a recalcitrant and obstructive bureaucracy. At the same time he more than likely enjoyed the discomfiture of the bu­ reaucrats as they awaited, off balance and on the defensive, the next vicious attack. Aside from all this, Alexander liked Katkov because he agreed for the most part with Katkov’s domestic policy proposals. The relationship between them was one of mutual benefit: Alexander could use Katkov’s paper as an unofficial and not-to-be-held-accountable 74

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mouthpiece, and Katkov in turn was more than satisfied by the influ­ ence he was able to wield through his direct access to the tsar. Meshcherskii, the second in-house journalist, played a larger role than Katkov or even Pobedonostsev in Alexander’s private life, and his influence upon the tsar was commensurably greater. Meshcherskii and Alexander first became acquainted through Alexander’s older brother Nicholas. They became close friends, and each cherished memories of careless years the three had spent together before Nich­ olas’s early death. Their friendship deepened during the years of mourning after Nicholas’s death; during this period Meshcherskii began writing reg­ ularly to Alexander, sending letters that combined a strained emo­ tionalism with a pretentious and pedagogic tone that to an outsider sounds strange in messages directed to a mature man and the heir to the throne, particularly coming from a man only six years his elder. Alexander, though, seems to have minded not at all, and over the suc­ ceeding years he developed with Meshcherskii one of the few close relationships of his life. In 1885 Meshcherskii began to send to the tsar his weekly diary in addition to regular letters, and it is from this date that his influence on Alexander grew to major proportions. The tone of the correspondence had by this time changed from magiste­ rial to sycophantic; letters and diary alike mix advice on state policy and personnel with the basest kind of flattery, juicy tidbits of gossip from the Saint Petersburg rumor mills and protestations of the writ­ er’s abject prostration before the figure of his lord and master.40 It says little for Alexander’s taste or judgment that these missives, carefully calculated to find a receptive ear, succeeded completely in their aim, and to such an extent that Alexander decided to help make Meshcherskii’s invaluable thoughts and opinions available to a larger audience: he borrowed from Bismarck, as he was fond of pointing out, the idea of subsidizing an ostensibly nongovernmental news­ paper, and could find no more worthy candidate than Meshcherskii’s the Citizen (which indeed was in need of subsidies, for its circulation figures reflected its editorial quality). Like Bismarck, Alexander was directly involved in his newspaper enterprise, and he used the Citizen as his voice in a more direct manner by far than Katkov’s Moscow News. He frequently read articles before their printing, an occurrence that made it exceedingly difficult for government press officials to control what they considered Meshcherskii’s excesses, since the articles al­ ready had the tacit approval of the supreme censor.41 75

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By 1887 Meshcherskii’s star was fully in the ascendant with Alex­ ander, and this despite a notorious homosexual scandal—he was pop­ ularly named the prince of Sodom—that led to his isolation from much of Petersburg society. But though Pobedonostsev (who had acted at times as his intermediary with the tsar and had even brought about a reconciliation between the two after a falling out) broke with him, Alexander did not.42 By 1887, the tsar did not depend much on Pobedonostsev, and in that year Katkov died and Tolstoi became se­ riously ill. Alexander needed support from someone with whom he felt personally at ease and whom he could trust, and he found all this in Meshcherskii. The prince, in turn, experienced his first major suc­ cess in influencing policy with the elevation of a protégé of his, Pro­ fessor of Mechanics I. A. Vyshnegradskii, to head the Ministry of Fi­ nance.43 By 1892 to receive Meshcherskii was again very much comme il faut, and he was considered “most fashionable” in Petersburg and one of the “most influential” men in Russia.44 Alexander, whose friendship played no small role in Meshcherskii’s ascent, may never have known quite the extent of his friend’s base­ ness, but he did know enough to induce him to keep the relationship quiet even while Meshcherskii boasted of it. Meshcherskii was widely judged a man of low moral character, corrupt, unprincipled, and greedy, and the tsar could hardly have been wholly ignorant of the contempt felt for Meshcherskii in the bureaucracy and society.45 It is more likely that Alexander knew Meshcherskii’s reputation and didn’t care. That Meshcherskii was completely dependent by this juncture upon his relationship with the tsar for his status, his prestige, and even the income he derived as editor of the Citizen may have made him all the more attractive as a friend and associate to the diffi­ dent and insecure Alexander. But the relationship was not so one­ sided as this view might suggest. If Alexander was indirectly able to count on the Citizen as his bought-and-paid-for mouthpiece, Me­ shcherskii received ample recompense in his ability to influence the course of government policy. This influence was in considerable mea­ sure a matter of inhibition, for the very existence of the Citizen's vi­ tuperation and reactionary tendentiousness helped to establish a cli­ mate of opinion in which actions were not undertaken, thoughts were not voiced, and projects were not proposed. But neither was Me­ shcherskii’s influence wholly passive, and there were numerous occa­ sions—such as Alexander’s major decision to reject both the majority and the minority report of the State Council on the land captain pro76

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ject of 1889—when Meshcherskii’s opinions exercised a crucial and even decisive influence.46 Not that Meshcherskii was ever at a loss to tell the tsar things he wanted to hear. From the very beginning of their correspondence Me­ shcherskii stressed the crucial position of the autocrat as the guard­ ian and safekeeper of the Russian people and the Russian land— sentiments hardly offensive to a Romanov. His later writings, public and private alike, are seldom without an exhortation to Alexander to preserve the autocratic patrimony intact. A letter of May 15, 1886, when his influence was starting to be felt strongly, is not atypical. “Now,” he told the tsar, “I am still more convinced of what a blessing autocracy is for Russia, to what an extent it is necessary and essential.” For another man this might be enough, but not for Prince Meshcher­ skii. “Autocracy,” he reminded the autocrat, “is the very spirit of Rus­ sia; Russia will die if you do not keep it firm.”47 In this case as in others, such homilies on the nature of autocracy were combined with warnings about imminent dangers threatening autocratic rule. The most pressing of such dangers was the bureau­ cracy. Like many other of the monarchist ideologues around Alex­ ander’s throne, Meshcherskii hated passionately the formalism and rationalism of the Petersburg bureaucratic establishment. It had al­ ready become a truism of Russian intellectual life to see Petersburg as an artificial enclave estranged from the essential sources of Russian life—her people and the Orthodox Church united through the figure of a patriarchal father-tsar. Meshcherskii played upon this image unintelligently but not without skill, and added to it his own variation on the theme: Petersburg was non-Russian because it was the citadel of the liberals, the reformist officials who were infected with constitu­ tionalism and thus with disloyalty to the sovereign and the principle of autocracy he embodied. The sovereign listened and gathered the strength to make the effort to take back control of his own organs of government through a major reassertion of personal authority. Meshcherskii did his best to encourage this course. His editorial tendency comes through in a lead article of 1882 that is a classic of its kind, titled, “Who are the Liberals? They or We?” Meshcherskii began his argument with the proposition that the basic mistake made during the reign of Alexander II was to allow tsarist power to become “lib­ eral,” for it was the purpose of the Saint Petersburg liberals to attack and weaken the autocracy. Thus there began in those years a “double rule . . . the rule of power and the rule of liberalism. Power under77

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took the peasant reform.” The liberals, for their part, “helped with the reform but in exchange demanded that the reform destroy the nobility.” A critique of the other reforms continued in the same vein. All the reforms were inherently un-Russian, for they were apart from the spirit of autocracy. “The tsar means power [tsar’ est’ vlast’]; his strength is in the church and the whole people spiritually united un­ der the power of the tsar; all are servants of the tsar.” If liberalism continued its existence in state life, Russia would inevitably be de­ stroyed; now it was not yet too late to save her. “The lie and falseness of liberalism must be expunged from state life, for it, and only it, pro­ duced all the terrible ailments, dishonesty, and corruption in our state service.” The indictment was followed by a harking back to a better and less corrupted time: “The reign of Nicholas I was distinguished by one feature, an autocracy that saw itself as necessary.”48 The words “liberal” and “liberalism” had by this time become code words for something very close to anarchy or revolution. The second edition of Vladimir Dal”s Dictionary of the Living Great-Russian Lan­ guage,, published in 1881, the year of Alexander I ll’s accession, and as neutral a source as one is likely to find (Dal’, unlike some other mid­ century compilers of dictionaries, was a lexicographer rather than a propagandist), defines liberal as: “A political freethinker, someone who thinks or acts freely [vol’no]; in general, someone desirous of great freedom for the people and of self-government.” Whatever the connotation such words may have had in the West—and certainly in the West also there were places they would have been anything but harmless—in Russia they signaled subversion. To the tsar and many others, “self-government” was not a summum bonum but very close to its opposite, and it was the last thing many Russian traditionalists— and not just the die-hard reactionaries among them—wanted. The Russian state was beset by many evils and many troubles, and liberal­ ism could be blamed for most of them. It was perhaps only natural that many who saw their personal posi­ tion deteriorate should take the reforms as the cause of the turmoil around them rather than as an attempt to deal with, and contain a tur­ moil already in existence. And certainly few would argue that the re­ forms had either fully cured existing problems or deny that they had created new ones. It was the liberals, the freethinkers, who wanted to undo the old order that had worked so well for centuries. Liberalism thus became a favorite scapegoat, the “source of all evils” besetting the empire, as the Messenger of Europe described the prevailing tradi­ tionalist sentiment.49 And Alexander III, of course, was willing to

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accept Meshcherskii’s charge that the State Council was by its opposi­ tion in league with “the camp of the liberal opposition,” or was of one mind with “the liberal party”—“reds” who were “not devoted to autocracy.”50 Meshcherskii’s numerous articles attacking the State Council were in the same vein as Katkov’s, his principal method being to portray the Council as a limitation on the monarch’s autocratic rights and will. With Meshcherskii the tone was more scurrilous, the formulation less intelligent and even less literate. Nonetheless, whatever Meshcher­ skii’s failings as a writer, he was effective enough with his prime au­ dience, and over the course of time Alexander adopted in large mea­ sure Meshcherskii’s categorization of the reformist bureaucrats as liberals, a subversive and dangerous “they” who were opposed to the forces of good, “us.”51 The men around Alexander III reinforced his fears about the pres­ ervation of his autocratic heritage as well as his prejudice against the goals and aspirations of the Great Reforms. Their attacks on the bu­ reaucracy confirmed and strengthened ideas Alexander was ready to believe and added to his suspicions of the State Council and other organs of government whose personnel he already distrusted. Pobedonostsev, Tolstoi, and their journalistic allies were often successful in influencing state policy through Alexander, and Alexander, in turn, used them as surrogates through which he could attack and frighten the bureaucracy he himself feared. Nonetheless, in spite of the urging of such advisers and Alexander’s own inclinations and wishes to reas­ sert a personal style of rule, he was not persuaded to try to do without the State Council and other auxiliary organs of government. This is eloquent evidence of the need the highest administrative circles had not only for the work of these agencies but for their existence as in­ struments and symbols of legitimacy.

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PART

II The Bureaucratic C urse

CHAPTER __________________

_4

____________________

R ech tsstaat

and

Reform

s we have seen, Alexander came to the throne filled with dis­ trust of his higher civil service and particularly the State Coun­ cil. And if one is to judge by appearances alone, his distrust of the Council had more than a little justification. During the entirety of Al­ exander’s reign, the Council and its Chancery were heavily staffed by reformers; they were in the majority at the time of Alexander’s acces­ sion, and in spite of his best efforts, they were in the majority still when his successor came to the throne some thirteen years later. One can well ask, Who were these men, that they were so well able to thwart all efforts to remove them? In the first place the reform bureaucrats were characterized by an ethos of their own and a distinct conception of government. Both the ethos and the conception developed concomitantly with the group’s emergence as part of a “genuine professionally committed bureau­ cracy.” 1 For the most part the men’s values had been formed not un­ der the influence of a home education, but in the environment of the new educational institutions of the empire, and particularly in those assigned the task of training experts in specialized areas such as law or engineering. Many were educated in the elite lycée at Tsarskoe Selo and had then continued their studies in the professional fields of law, statistics, or political economy at Petersburg University or the Ped­ agogical Institute. With such elite training, Russia began to share in the general European development of a modern rational, Weberianstyle bureaucracy. Particularly instrumental in such development, in Russia as in Prussia, was an education in law. The values, goals, and ethos of the men who finished such training

A

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were further shaped by participation in discussion circles and gather­ ings, like those of the Russian Geographical Society, which became a center of reformist intellectual and social life during the 1850s. For most of these men, higher education and their specialized profes­ sional training were followed by long administrative experience in postings at the statistical section of the Ministry of Interior, the Naval Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, or the Ministry of Finance; there were other outposts and substations, but these were their home bases. Their common training and experience led them to view their role as officials in a new context. At the base of their consciousness lay the conviction that they were no longer merely the personal servants or even agents of the tsar, but rather public officials, professionals who served the polity as a whole. Seeing themselves as seasoned experts, they shared distinct feelings of self-respect, integrity, and even auton­ omy. And typically, these Russian professionals were possessed of a strong reformist bent.2 By the time of Alexander I ll’s accession, the core of this group con­ sisted of men who had actively participated in the formulation and execution of the Great Reforms. They were acutely conscious of Rus­ sia’s backwardness and were convinced of the need to transform Rus­ sia socially and economically; but they combined these beliefs with a growing awareness that reform would not work without the inclusion of a social dimension that required some measure of consultation with society. The sense of civic responsibility and the social conscience of many of these reformers brought them into close contact and cooper­ ation with some members of the nonrevolutionary intelligentsia: men like P. G. Redkin and K. D. Kavelin of Moscow University, or the Slav­ ophiles lu. F. Samarin and I. A. Aksakov, who took refuge in the Ministry of Interior during the last years of Nicholas I. Thus writers and critics met at the ministries and in circles, salons, and discussion groups many of the men who became important figures of the reform movement: N. A. and D. A. Miliutin, A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, K. I. Arsen’ev, A. D. Shumakher, I. P. Arapetov, K. I. Domontovich, A. V. Golovnin, and others. The members of this loosely knit group, called by sympathetic contemporaries “the party of Saint Petersburg progress,” found additional support for their aspirations among two of the Romanov family: the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, in whose salon many of their ideas were exchanged and developed, and es­ pecially the Grand Duke Konstantin. In Konstantin the reformers found a natural ally with access to the very highest governmental and dynastic spheres. The konstantinovtsy were especially bound to each 84

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other and to Konstantin by an intricate web of shared backgrounds. Some of the reformers, such as Golovnin and M. Kh. Reutern, were original konstantinovtsy, who had been associated with Konstantin dur­ ing the earlier period when he had been occupied with naval reforms; of these five came to occupy ministerial positions under Alexander II. Others, such as D. N. Nabokov, who was minister of justice under both Alexander II and Alexander III, had been associated with Kon­ stantin not only in the navy but also during his viceroy ship of Poland, and they had there established close ties with the grand duke and each other. Still others shared first an educational background as graduates of the Tsarskoe Selo lycée or the School of Jurisprudence, sometimes even as roommates, and only later established contact with the konstantinovtsy.* During the years Konstantin presided over the State Council, from 1865 to 1881, he helped to see that a good number of his associates and other reformist officials received appointments to the Council or its Chancery. Among the more important of these one should include A. A. Abaza, minister of finance from 1880 to 1881 and later chair­ man of the Department of Economy of the State Council; Golovnin, minister of education from 1861 to 1868; Reutern, minister of fi­ nance from 1862 to 1878; Nabokov, minister of justice from 1878 to 1885; N. I. Stoianovskii, chairman of the department of Civil and Re­ ligious Affairs from 1884 to 1897; S. N. Urusov, chairman of the De­ partment of Law from 1871 to 1882; D. M. Sol’skii, state comptroller from 1878 to 1888 and chairman of the Department of Law from 1889 to 1892; and N. Kh. Bunge, minister of finance from 1881 to 1886; among at-large Council members one would include ZablotskiiDesiatovskii, Liuboshchinskii, K. K. Grot, B. P. Mansurov, M. E. Kovalevskii, K. V. Chevkin, P. A. Zubov, A. F. Bychkov, Prince M. S. Volkonskii, and Peretts, who was head of the Chancery of the Council from 1878 to 1883, when he was made a member. Other reformers continued to be appointed during the next reign, in spite of Alexander I ll’s antipathy to the reformist group. He suc­ ceeded in blocking the appointment of reformers, but was unable or unwilling to prevent the appointment of a surprisingly large number of men who had either themselves been directly involved with the re­ forms or spent the bulk of their careers in the postreform period and were associated with the reforms and reformers. Such men would in­ clude M. S. Kakhanov (1881), Redkin (1882), M. F. Gol’tgoer (1885), V. M. Markus (1892), V. M. Mengden (1889), E. V. Frishch (1883), G. P. Galagan (1882), and V. D. Filosofov (1881).4 In addition, a large 85

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number of Chancery staffers, particularly those appointed during the period of the judicial reform, belonged to various groupings associ­ ated with the konstantinovtsy? Up to the time of Konstantin’s death in 1892—that is, eleven years after he had been forced to vacate the Council presidency—the Council konstantinovtsy kept in informal contact with one another and with members of the wider group of reformist bureaucrats, as well as with Konstantin himself. The grand duke’s annual visit to Saint Pe­ tersburg became a source of particular distress and anxiety for Alex­ ander III, as it was the occasion for a variety of social gatherings, in­ cluding an obligatory dinner at either Konstantin’s Saint Petersburg palace or Golovnin’s home, that he considered even more dangerous than the frequent correspondence the group otherwise indulged in. Equally troubling to the tsar were the annual banquets in honor of the anniversary of the emancipation, at which members of the reformist old guard, including important and highly visible Council members, met to celebrate old victories and commiserate over new defeats.6 It should be emphasized, however, that those of the reformers on the State Council in 1881 who had begun their careers in the postre­ form era were neither the trained disciples of nor the spiritual suc­ cessors to the core group of older men who had been the architects of the reforms. The core group in no way engaged in or encouraged such attempts to pass on its ideas or influence—and this, in turn, led to trouble for the parties involved. These various (and often diverse) groups of reformist officials wanted not only to maintain the basic structure of the reforms, but also to further their implementation with the aim of contributing to the modernization of the empire and the rationalization of the auto­ cratic system in general. They tended to blame the empire’s postreform problems not so much on defects in the reforms themselves or even on what Raeff has called the “bureaucratic approach” underly­ ing them, as on the autocracy’s failure to follow through on the course it had begun. In their view, this failure of will and nerve led to the disenchantment of educated society, which had expected more than the reforms as constituted were able to effect. Among the more mo­ bile elements of society, the raznochintsy who felt their ambitions cheated of the possibility of fulfillment, and even among a nobility that saw its already insecure position still further undermined, this unhappiness led to the growth of “anarchists and socialists” and dis­ affected of every stripe. The government attempted to cure this mal­ aise by suppressing not its root causes, but simply its manifestations. 86

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Thus was inaugurated the vicious cycle that led to the troublous times of the crisis of autocracy of the late seventies and the eighties.7 For the most part the reformers, though they had contact also with Slavophiles like the Aksakovs and their circle, were Westernizers. One of their hopes was that the reforms would help to put Russia on the path of increased Europeanization; in this view fundamental change was necessary for the national regeneration of Russia and the restora­ tion of her status as a great European power. This view was expressed with force by D. A. Miliutin, longtime minister of war and a seasoned statesman and politician, commenting in his diary on a speech Pobedonostsev made at the crucial March 1881 meeting on the LorisMelikov proposal. Pobedonostsev’s talk, he said, amounted to a “direct, indiscriminate condemnation of everything accomplished during the previous reign. He dared to characterize the Great Re­ forms . . . as a criminal error! This was a negation of everything at the foundation of European civilization.” At this same meeting Abaza stood to speak in defense of the re­ forms, admitting only imperfections that were “almost unavoidable in the transition from utter stagnation to a reasonable degree of civil lib­ erty.”8 Thus were the lines drawn at the very beginning of Alex­ ander’s reign, and it was quite clear that one of the parties saw itself, for all its agreement with the basic statist principles of the autocracy, as the representative of European c-i-v-i-l-i-z-a-t-i-o-n (as Turgenev’s Potugin put it in Smoke) in a great country that had allowed itself (to use, this time, one of Turgenev’s titles) to turn into a Zatish’e: “a pro­ vincial backwater.” Grand Duke Konstantin would have understood: all his life, he told a colleague during this same stormy period, he had let his conduct be guided by his belief “in the necessity of the progres­ sive movement of humanity along the road of enlightenment.”9 In varying degrees the reformists gave their allegiance to this ideal: Eu­ rope was the model, and it was upon the European path that Russia would travel. The Great Reforms marked only the beginning of this passage.

A New Principle of Government: The Concept of the Rechtsstaat The basis for the reformers’ concept of government and the central principle linking their positions on the problems facing the empire

87

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was the notion of a state defined by law, a Rechtsstaat. The develop­ ment and growth of this idea were intimately linked with the spread of legal training and the associated rise of a more professional bu­ reaucracy. Hintze has pointed out the relationship of mutual rein­ forcement that existed between the development of legal training and the notion of rule under law in Europe: whereas the Polizeistaat had little use and less love for jurists, the newly emerging Rechtsstaat made jurists absolutely necessary to the proper functioning of the state.10 While it seems pointless to get involved in chicken-versus-egg contro­ versies about priority and sequence, certainly in Russia also the devel­ opment of the notion of legal order was intimately linked with the de­ velopment of a legal profession to promote it. Before getting into a discussion of the working out of Rechtsstaat principles in Russia, it might be worthwhile to clarify the term itself: usage among historians, political theorists, and legal scholars has been diverse enough to cause no little confusion about what is meant. To some it represents exclusively a principle of jurisprudence; these will stress formal, normative, purely juridical criteria of definition, and will find no contradiction between the Rechtsstaat and absolutism. The absolutist Rechtsstaat of this sort is evaluated on the basis of three criteria. The first is the principle of administrative legality, which requires that the state be ruled by law rather than by the arbi­ trary exercise of power. In Russia this principle was proclaimed in the fundamental laws, but was only imperfectly implemented. Genuine rule of law (the Rechtszustand) requires that the state power (the Staats­ gewalt), that is to say the autocracy, submit to its own laws. Under the tsars, there was and could be no real guarantee of this, particularly since the whole issue was further complicated by the difficulties in dis­ tinguishing between the scope and nature of a law and an administra­ tive decree. The second criterion is the requirement of an independent judici­ ary to serve as the primary support for legality and to safeguard the individual rights of citizens. When the judiciary was separated from the administration by the judiciary reform of 1864, Russia had begun to meet this criterion. The third criterion of a Rechtsstaat, regular pro­ cedure for the administration of justice, began to be met with the creation in 1866 of two independent appeal departments, one civil and one criminal, under the jurisdiction of the Senate." None of these three formal criteria of a Rechtsstaat in its legalistic conception was incompatible with absolutism, though all three repre­ sent some of the features associated with modern nonabsolutist states. 88

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It is worth pointing out that the concept of legality in the Rechtsstaat is much broader and encompasses a great deal more than mere bu­ reaucratic legal procedure, the practice of the eighteenth-century Po­ lizeistaat. But even though these concepts of law are quite distinct, there is enough confusion around the terms that so distinguished a historian as John Keep could on one occasion write of “Russia’s prog­ ress toward that 18th century ideal, the well-ordered Rechtsstaat.” 12 It is not so much that Keep was wrong as that he had terminology con­ fused, for as Rosenberg in his study of the eighteenth-century Prus­ sian Polizeistaat pointed out with regard to bureaucratic legality, the “function was to manufacture obedience, not to protect human and civil rights. It is therefore grossly misleading to inject the liberal ideas of government of, by, and under law (Rechtsstaat) into the Prus­ sian police state of the old regime.” 13 Virtually the same can be said of eighteenth-century Russia where the term “legality” (zakonnost’) was used to indicate the proper functioning of the state apparatus; that is, rule through law rather than rule of law. The purpose of the Rechtsstaat was to introduce regularity of procedure in order to promote the wel­ fare of the citizenry; that of the Polizeistaat, to increase the authority of the sovereign and assure the obedience of his officials. In Russia it was probably Speransky who first clearly distinguished between the two notions and who began to think of legality in Rechtsstaat terms in his broad reform plan for the empire.14 A second approach to defining the Rechtsstaat, distinct from the strictly legalistic, extends the concept of Rechtsstaat into the realm of political philosophy and regards the state of law as inseparably bound with the practice of representative government. This view is charac­ teristic of the English and American interpretation of the liberal idea, “rule of, by, and under law.” Such rule of law will guarantee a legal order and the citizenry’s civil rights, and in addition create and pro­ tect a variety of libertarian values associated with a representative gov­ ernment elected by the people and responsible to them. Continental Rechtsstaat liberalism evolved quite differently, and put considerably more emphasis on law and legality than on parliamentary sover­ eignty; both systems incorporate guarantees of certain civil and politi­ cal rights.15 In the Russian instance, the reformist officials discussed here were all advocates of at least the Rechtsstaat of the first kind. Their insis­ tence was on the principle of formal legality, zakonnost’, according to which the government would operate on the basis of uniform legal procedures, and its actions would be bound by firm laws that would 89

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eliminate arbitrariness on all levels from the lowest to the very high­ est. But many of them went beyond the principle of formal legality alone and championed a whole set of associated concepts, including an independent judiciary, due process, trial by jury, permanent ten­ ure of judges, and other matters concerned with the assurance of cit­ izen rights and the rule of law in the empire. The notions of “legality and process” (the linkage is characteristic), of “freedom of conscience, the zemstvo, and the new judicial institutions,” “a pioneer of Russian citizenship” (applied to the lifework of a jurist), “the principles of freedom of the personality, of legality, and of the independent action of society”—all of these phrases drawn from the memoirs and writ­ ings of reformers from this period have a bearing on what Koni, one of the most distinguished of Russian jurists and the tenant of a variety of judicial posts under all three of the last tsars, characterized as Rus­ sia’s progress through the development of the judicial statutes toward the status of a Rechtsstaat.l6 Even the reformist officials’ adherence to the principle of zakonnost’ caused the autocracy moments of unease. What was downright dis­ turbing, though, was that for many of the reformers the notion of le­ gality went beyond matters of formal practice and definition to in­ clude some incorporation of public participation in the process of political decision making. In this regard there was a definite, albeit gradual, evolution in the meaning and implication given to legality from the time of the Great Reforms to the crisis of autocracy of the late 1870s: what had begun neatly and simply as a circumscribed set of beliefs relating to legal order and procedure increasingly became associated with the political philosophy of constitutional government. The original reformers were for the most part convinced statists committed to a strong autocracy and to a central government that, by being above all private and selfish interests and operating on the basis of uniform legal procedure, could act for the good of the whole na­ tion. The government could thus work as an instrument of progress, assisted in this effort by a bureaucracy committed to serve the polity as a whole. In this regard both the autocrat and his servants professed a profound distrust of society as a congeries of private groups incapable of transcending selfish interests. This attitude led them to resort fre­ quently to a bureaucratic approach to Russia’s problems and to favor imposed solutions and reform from above, which would avoid the messy aspects of involving society in state affairs.17 The assumption throughout was that such consultation as was necessary with society 90

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could be carried out within the bureaucracy itself, for was it not after all also composed of members of society? This approach to the problems facing Russia would never disap­ pear (not, one might remark, under the old or the new regime), yet with the development of increasingly visible postreform problems culminating in the crisis of autocracy, there also developed a greater willingness on the part of many bureaucrats to try to involve larger elements of the greater society in the process of reform. The statist orientation of the original architects of the Great Re­ forms had led them to confine the dialogue between state and society to bureaucratic channels and had left the wider society without any means of political expression. Virtually the whole of government had been frightened by the magnitude of the initial response to the per­ ception that emancipation was no longer forbidden territory for dis­ cussion, and it had drawn back in on itself in the process of formulat­ ing the peasant and subsequent reforms. Almost without exception the government, from the tsar down, was opposed to letting elected representatives help, even in an advisory role, in the preparation of the reform legislation. No one had grasped—how could anyone, when there was no precedent of any kind for decades and even cen­ turies back?—the importance for the success of their work (let alone the progress of the empire along the path of modernization they had charted for it) of widening the basis for some kind of committed and informed support for the autocracy. (But again one wonders how any­ one could work out the contradictions involved in a broad-based au­ tocracy resting upon the consent of the governed.) By the waning years of Alexander II’s reign, with the crisis of au­ tocracy everywhere manifest, the consensus on the question of citizen participation began to change. Support gradually developed within the reformist bureaucracy for inviting elected representatives of so­ ciety to participate in a consultative capacity in lawmaking: the con­ sultative-legislative body was to have its own consultants. Abaza stated the case eloquently during debate on the Loris-Melikov proposal: “The throne,” he pointed out, “cannot rest exclusively on a million bayonets and an army of officials.” He urged strongly that “the edu­ cated classes” be drawn “into participation in national life,” stressing that advisory bodies of the sort being discussed would not diminish but rather strengthen the real power of the tsar.18 This stress on the continued preservation of unlimited autocratic power (and Abaza was by no means the only one who did so) points to 91

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a basic inconsistency in the reformers’ arguments that weakened their position and gave ammunition to their enemies. The inconsistency began with the Great Reforms themselves, for they had introduced into Russian political life a set of principles inspired by the very phi­ losophy of constitutional government everyone seemed so eager to deny. Whatever the intention, the reforms involved, as Szeftel put it, “the principle of the supremacy of law underlying the independence of the judiciary, and the principle of government from below, by the people themselves, implemented by the local and municipal selfgovernment.”19 By advocating that the educated classes participate fully in the national life, the reformers were going even farther and coming very close to proposing some measure of public control over the autocracy. This did not stop them from arguing that neither the Great Reforms nor their current proposals involved any contradiction of unlimited autocratic power since both were the creation of that very power. This was the only tactical position the reformers could adopt, but it was probably their honest opinion as well. As such, it be­ comes easier to understand if we remember the extent to which the reformers’ statist preconceptions could sometimes amount to blind­ ers. The truth is, though, that their conservative opponents had a clearer perception of the underlying issues when they argued that the new set of principles introduced with the Great Reforms and now being proposed for extension was indeed incompatible with the autocracy.20 The problem was that the reformers embraced not just elements of the juridical concept of the Rechtsstaat but of the political theory as well. Thus one finds incorporated as part of the Weltanschauung of various of the reformist officials a degree of liberalism in the Western sense, with its emphasis on the combination of a legal order with the guarantee of civil rights and some measure of public control over the bureaucracy. This element of their thought became clearer as the focus of debate moved from a discussion of matters of formal organi­ zation and procedure increasingly, over the course of the seventies, to questions of social and cultural policy. In this realm the general thrust of reformist thought was in support of a more open, diverse, and freer society, with accompanying decentralization and local as well as individual autonomy. It was this combination of liberalism with pro­ fessionalism and expertise that made the reformist officials appear such a threat to the autocracy. The liberal and progressive aspects of the reformers’ conception of government helped to form the ethical ideals that guided their con92

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duct. They also served the very important function of legitimizing in their own eyes their status as a privileged stratum of officials: in con­ trast to the bureaucratic agents of an earlier era, they saw themselves as the servants (and also the tutors) of the polity as a whole. It was the ethos resulting from this changed perception of their role that led to the unprecedented resignations of the triumvirate of reformist minis­ ters, Abaza from Finance, Loris-Melikov from Interior, and D. A. Miliutin from War, when Alexander III rejected in toto their proposed program of reform in the so-called Loris-Melikov constitution. With that rejection and the subsequent resignations there passed the most opportune time in Russian history for the institutional consolidation of the reformers’ concept of government. Given the autocracy’s fear of specialized expertise in the bureau­ cracy, Alexander was perhaps bound to have misgivings about this new type of official in whom professionalism, expertise, and liberal­ ism were all mixed together in proportions no less dangerous because they were unknown. At the time of his accession he was well aware that this type of official was strongly represented in the State Council, which cannot have helped to reassure him about the trustworthiness of this organ “closest to himself in the government.” And yet there was little that he could immediately do about it. Conditions in the pe­ riod of crisis associated with his accession were such that he could nei­ ther ignore the reformers nor do without them completely. Even many years later, when he had appointed his own men and otherwise enforced his autocratic will, he could frequently give the impression that he felt himself to be bargaining over an issue with a clearly de­ fined bureaucratic faction, and one powerful enough to have blocked or defeated him on previous occasions.21 From the very beginning of his reign, Alexander saw this reform faction among the bureaucrats (and especially its Konstantin section in the Council) as a prime potential obstacle to the execution of the program he intended, however vaguely, to pursue. On numerous oc­ casions he indicated his suspicion and distrust and tried to oppose its force with countervailing action of his own.22 On two occasions he ve­ toed the proposals put to him by consecutive Council secretaries to rationalize Council business by arranging for a more equitable dis­ tribution of the work load among departments; the Department of Economy was to be divided into two sections, one dealing exclusively with budgetary matters, the other with financial affairs. The pro­ posals seemed to make sense on the face of it, but Alexander was sus­ picious that ulterior motives might lie behind them. He feared that 93

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the secretaries (and particularly Peretts, who “reminded him of a time for which he had little sympathy”) wanted to strengthen the influence the Konstantin group would have on the passage of legislative pro­ posals by packing the new department and dominating the old. When he was informed that Abaza, the most visible leader of the reform fac­ tion, was to be recommended as chairman of the proposed new de­ partment, Alexander’s worst fears seemed confirmed.23 Alexander’s quarrel with Abaza did not end there. He refused even to appoint Abaza to the chairmanship of the Department of Economy in its old form because, he said, Abaza had on numerous occasions “openly announced his disagreement with government policy.” Here one can hardly help but sympathize with the tsar, especially as he proved unable to stick to his decision. Against his better judgment he was persuaded to reverse himself and go ahead with the appointment he had previously rejected as dangerous. This time he gave as his rea­ son the man’s undeniable experience, intelligence, interest, and en­ ergy. In other words, he seemed to be saying, there existed in the em­ pire men whom the Tsar of All Russia could not do without, no matter how great the personal antagonism felt toward them. And the antagonism remained: having made the appointment, Alexander continued to suspect Abaza of potential disloyalty and had a close watch kept on him and the opinions he expressed in the Council. Abaza did what he could to remove suspicion from himself (and thus strengthen his own faction) even while hoping to earn the goodwill of the tsar by removing himself at crucial moments of important Council debate, but this had little effect other than to increase further the vi­ ciousness of the attacks launched upon him (with Alexander’s tacit and perhaps open encouragement) in Katkov’s and Meshcherskii’s re­ actionary press.24 Such fears and suspicion about the liberalism of his bureaucrats stem directly from the association that existed in Alexander’s mind between liberalism and constitutionalism. Almost as soon as he be­ came emperor, Alexander was complaining about the constitutionalist leanings of Loris-Melikov, Abaza, and Miliutin. “It is strange,” he wrote to Pobedonostsev, “to listen to intelligent people who can talk seriously about a representative principle in Russia; these are no more than learned phrases read out by them from our scabby journalism and from bureaucratic liberalism.”25 Nor did Alexander hesitate to raise the issue directly with the parties themselves. In the same month in which he wrote the letter to Pobedonostsev he confronted LorisMelikov with the charge that he and his former colleagues Abaza and 94

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Miliutin were representatives of a liberal party and that they did not “sympathize with the autocratic principle.”26 Alexander’s anxieties on this score were hardly unjustified. Liberal journals like the Voice and the Messenger of Europe more or less openly supported, within the limits allowed by the censorship, notions of gov­ ernment involving constitutional or quasi-constitutional limitations on the autocracy. They also supported in the main the policies of the reformist officials. And during the late 1870s and early 1880s, before the new emergency press legislation resulted in the closing of many liberal journals and newspapers, these organs put particular stress on the State Council as a possible agency of what amounted to control of the autocracy. It was hoped that the concentration of all legislative machinery in the Council would promote the development of parlia­ mentary inclinations, and a Council strong in legislative authority and influence was seen as the best guarantee of moving the autocracy to­ ward a foundation in law and away from arbitrariness and admin­ istrative almightiness. Many of the journals had contacts of a more or less direct nature with the reformers in the Council, many of whom, particularly those on the staff of the Council Chancery, served as sources of inside infor­ mation for their supporters in the press. This circumstance was well enough known that one of Alexander I ll’s first demands to his newly appointed (in 1883) head of the Chancery was that he purge the office of such connections.27 It was just such connections, of course, that provided fertile ground for a Meshcherskii to exploit the tsar’s fear of the liberals—or, as he frequently referred to them, the “reds.” This was a word Alexander was well familiar with, as it had gained consid­ erable currency in his youth as a term of opprobrium used by court society to refer to those among the so-called enlightened bureaucrats of the 1850s and 1860s who were suspected of constitutional lean­ ings. Alexander had his own categories as well: for this Great Russian chauvinist the reformers were simply cosmopolitans and un-Russian, representatives of that European life and those Western aspirations so abhorrent to this clumsy and lethargic Russian tsar of German blood.28 In truth, the greater threat to Alexander and his plans came not so much from a conscious aim to limit the autocrat as from changes that had already taken place in the institutional organization and composi­ tion of the bureaucratic apparatus. Thus the main opposition to Alex­ ander came not from constitutional efforts, but from an institutional inertia that was perhaps more restrictive still. By the 1880s the re95

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formist officials in the Council were prepared to resist any proposal that would significantly change the Great Reforms, and to do this less from intellectual commitment than because of habits of bureaucratic routine and an emotional attachment to the great work of reform with which they were identified. Thus simple bureaucratic procedure, the habits and patterns of the established way of doing things, acted as a brake on the counterreforms of the 1880s much as it had on the reforms of the 1860s. Many members of the Council had been active as ministers and other high bureaucrats in shaping the policies that had become identified with bureaucratic liberalism. These policies were now under attack by the new ministers of Alexander I ll’s government. In the 1860s re­ form-minded ministers and bureaucrats had encountered strong op­ position from a conservative Council; now these same reformers would act as mirror image to what they had fought against in the pre­ vious era. Within this context any fresh idea or fresh approach to the future development of the empire faced enormous inertial opposition. Witte and his Ministry of Finance would discover this during their attempt to enact an industrial legislative program. Their program gave indus­ trialization priority over the concerns of agrarian society. But because it was debated within a context in which political discourse and think­ ing had become confined to the single criterion of whether proposals extended or retreated from the concerns of the Great Reforms, it could not be discussed on its merits. This restrictive approach could be seen also in the debate over clas­ sical and modern curricula that raged throughout Europe in the sev­ enties and eighties. In Russia it was argued almost exclusively in sym­ bolic terms associated with the Great Reforms.29 An approach of this kind easily led to shallow thinking, and, no matter how easy it is to understand in human terms, this aspect of the aftermath of the Great Reforms had fewer positive than negative qualities. The character of this relationship becomes clearer if we look at the emotional attachment and nostalgia many of the Council members felt toward the accomplishments of their epoch. That had been a pe­ riod when Russian reform officialdom was filled with a sense of pride, accomplishment, and even euphoria centered around its own work and the figure of an autocrat who was in its opinion the prime mover of Russia’s greatness—they were men possessed by what Golovnin called “‘le feu sacre’ without which nothing great can be achieved.”30 96

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And that they were contributing to the achievement of something great few of them ever doubted. Golovnin expresses well this sense of moral certitude and even su­ periority in a letter he wrote to D. A. Miliutin. The occasion was the defeat just suffered by their party—the majority—on the proposed university statute of 1884, which would undo the major accomplish­ ments Golovnin had supervised while minister of education and spon­ sor of the liberal statute of 1863. “The huge majority,” Golovnin wrote, “that expressed itself in the combined departments while dis­ cussing the university statute was, it seems to me, the last protest of the past against the present, the last signal from the past about the mistakes of the present; but protest is useless.” As he put it in another letter, as far as he was concerned, nothing less than an earthquake separated the old epoch from the new.31 Mansurov, another recipient of Golov­ nin’s letters, wrote that he thought of the statute of 1863 as a moral commitment that had to be defended: “The moral burden that lies on you and on Nikolai [the former minister of education] does not lie on me—but I reckon it my duty to stand by my convictions, even though it is like crying in the wilderness.”32 Golovnin voiced a recurrent feel­ ing: “What grieves me most of all,” he said, “is the manifest injustice of it, a kind of malicious attitude to the deeds of persons, most of whom are no longer even alive, of an earlier time. . . . One under­ stands that after twenty years imperfections should manifest them­ selves . . . deficiencies, mistakes. These have to be corrected, and one has to act carefully in so doing. But above everything else, one should acknowledge the justness of the great monarch and his co-workers. Well, it’s just this that is not in evidence, and that hurts and shocks.”33 It was this kind of attachment, based initially upon conviction and a sense of the right, but now felt to be the primary activity that gave meaning to an entire life, that was responsible for the inability to ac­ cept structural changes in the reforms even when particular features of them proved in practice misguided or unworkable.

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5 Castor Oil and Windbag Lawyers

lthough the reformers shared a general conception of govern.ment and were united by their loyalty to the Great Reforms, the allegiances and beliefs of particular individuals varied widely. Within the reformers there existed well-defined groups with views, aspira­ tions, interests, and goals of their own. One such was the economists. These were men originally educated at Tsarskoe Selo who then received more specialized training in statis­ tics and political economy at Saint Petersburg University or the Ped­ agogical Institute. Along with other reformers, the economists were active participants in the social and intellectual life of the Russian Geographical Society. They enjoyed the protection of Grand Duke Konstantin, in whose Naval Ministry many of them spent some time, but their prime base and center of activity was the Ministry of Fi­ nance. These men shared a set of values and goals determined by their common professional outlook; by the end of the Crimean War they had in large measure agreed among themselves on a program of economic development and growth. This included, among other things, emancipation, the encouragement of capital formation, the at­ traction of foreign investment capital, the extension of public and pri­ vate banking and credit facilities, the promotion of a stable currency, and concomitant industrial development, including development of the empire’s railroad facilities to promote domestic and export trade. Government economic policy was to be decidedly interventionist; the state was assigned an important role in promoting and supervising economic development, but its economic activity was to stop consider­ ably short of taking over private business.1

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The men behind these formulations were well entrenched in the Ministry of Finance, and two of them, Reutern and Bunge, served as ministers. Within the ministry and later as members of the State Council they addressed economic issues with particular interest, es­ pecially as these reflected their professional loyalties. The jurists are even more clearly distinguishable as a separate group with more or less clearly delineated background, loyalties, and interests. Among them institutional and professional loyalties took precedence to a degree found among no other group of profession­ als.2 Their legal training was carried out at the School of Jurispru­ dence or one of the universities, primarily Moscow and St. Peters­ burg, and was sufficiently uniform that all jurists could assume in each other a similar training and orientation. After his education, the typi­ cal jurist went into the Ministry of Justice, the Senate, or the court sys­ tem. Of particular significance for the development of a tradition of independence was the newly independent court system; many of the most notable jurists spent their service years there before appoint­ ment to the State Council. Because jurists shared service ties with their colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, they enjoyed strong sup­ port from a firmly consolidated ministerial interest group with a sense of its own traditions and a professional outlook that took for granted the inviolability of the legal system and the judicial statutes from which it had sprung. Alexander perceived the jurists as a group with objectives and aims often inimical to his, but though he had little use for them, he was in the uncomfortable situation of being ill able to dispense with their ex­ pertise. By his time jurists had become essential to the administration of the state, and not only in the capital where they seemed ubiquitous. With the emancipation of the peasantry in 1861, the administration of justice had become a matter of pressing concern in the provinces. The consequent need for all manner of lawyers, prosecutors, inves­ tigators, and judges put the central autocratic power in a position of dependence that accounts for a great deal of Alexander’s hostility. Distrust of professionally trained jurists was already an autocratic tradition by the time of Alexander III. Legal expertise too easily “concealed the potential for independent initiative,”3 not to mention faction and rebellion. Jurists who entered the bureaucracy after 1864, and particularly the judicial bureaucracy, began increasingly to dis­ play independent thinking about the role and meaning of law. Partly through their influence, respect for law as something above any indi­ vidual began to penetrate into the bureaucracy at large. In some mea99

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sure this sentiment began to supersede the traditional respect paid to authority and rank above all else; in any event it was found dangerous. Tendencies of this sort were particularly magnified in all aspects of service connected with the administration of justice. A legal career was respected and seen by many as constituting a distinct and notable contribution to the public weal. Koni thought of the law as “a calling like first love. Such a love,” he said, “exists not only in a man’s per­ sonal life, but in his public life as well. In both cases it is the first thing to enter his heart and the last thing to leave his memory.”4 And we might remember, too, as Solzhenitsyn has recently reminded us with force, that the law and legalism are not revered traditions of long standing in Russia. One of the strongest bonds uniting the officers of the new courts was a conviction that they were bringing to Russia one of the most important fruits of Western civilization. The outstanding representatives among them felt for the law all that reverence and awe that the legal minds of England and the continent had expressed—and indeed developed—over the course of centuries, but with the added excitement and intensity that come with the sense of being in the van­ guard of something new and important, of bringing enlightenment and with it moral and material benefits of incalculable value. Neither were these men who saw their homeland as some cultural backwater or a preserve of quaint archaisms and who suffered from the sense of lethargy that comes with such an attitude; rather they felt themselves part of the quickening of a Russia ready to shake off the sleep of cen­ turies and join what was everywhere and universally seen in the West as the triumphant forward march of progressive mankind. They were imbued with a sense of destiny and were eager to say that “new word” of which Dostoevsky spoke, to Russia, and, indeed, to the world. None of these characteristics, not the professional solidarity, nor the sense of mission, nor the technical and arcane expertise com­ manded by the jurists, was such as to endear them to the new tsar. It was known that Alexander III had little love for any kind of jurist and that the very idea of the Senate, the stronghold of juridical elements in the administration, was, as Loris-Melikov put it, “as inimical to him as castor oil.”5 To compound matters, Alexander saw jurists all about, even where they weren’t, for he tended strongly to think of all bu­ reaucrats as jurists. General A. A. Kireev, who was close to court cir­ cles at this time, noted in his diary that Alexander indiscriminately labeled “everyone from senators to small-fry as doctrinaire and quasi­ revolutionary,” and complained that even though these people re100

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ceived a salary from the state, still they opposed the government at every turn. At the bottom of it all, Alexander feared that these “wind­ bag lawyers,” as he called them, wanted nothing more than to set them­ selves up as parliamentary deputies, and that behind their attachment to the judicial statutes there lay a widespread if still inchoate conspir­ acy to wrap the autocracy round with constitutional limitations.6 Alexander’s opposition to the judicial statutes was at least threefold. First, he saw them as an attempt to impose a constitution on Russia if not directly, then from the side, by stealth. Second, he saw the statutes as already constituting a limitation upon the exercise of his power—as indeed they did. The removal of the judiciary from the direct discre­ tionary control of the administration hardly squared with traditional conceptions of autocratic prerogatives—though neither did those conceptions square with juridical notions of the developing Rechts­ staat, here certainly the autocratic party saw the unavoidable contra­ dictions between autocracy and law more clearly than did the optimis­ tic windbag lawyers. The tsar had strong and clearly formulated ideas about the presumed sanctity and inviolability of the judicial statutes and could express himself on the subject forcibly. Grand Duke Mi­ chael reported to State Secretary Polovtsov Alexander’s desires as fol­ lows: the tsar “does not hold with the opinion that the autocratic power should not participate in the course of justice; [the tsar be­ lieves] that the legal statutes were confirmed by the late tsar upon the insistence of persons who wanted to tie him to a constitution, and that this was the first step in that direction . . . in this regard he considers it necessary to change the judicial statutes.”7 Finally, Alexander’s opposition was based upon more than purely theoretical considerations of protecting autocratic power against con­ stitutionalism: Alexander could also base his views upon the judi­ ciary’s past performance. That the record was short made little dif­ ference, other than to contribute to the sense that there was still hope things could be changed. For since the involvement of the new in­ dependent judiciary in political trials beginning in the 1860s, there could be little question that the legal system was working to thwart the exercise of unchecked autocratic authority. Revolutionaries had been able to use the courts as an open forum in which to denounce the gov­ ernment. Juries on several occasions showed sufficient sympathy for political prisoners to return verdicts of not guilty even when there was little doubt the accused had committed the acts they were charged with. In the 1870s the government mounted a series of cautionary po101

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litical trials intended to punish and discourage revolutionary tenden­ cies, only to find itself publicly humiliated when one court after an­ other refused to return a verdict of guilty.8 To try to contain the damage the government moved from the judi­ cial to the administrative realm. On the one hand, it pressed for changes in the system of justice, while, on the other, it brought into play a variety of extra- and quasi-legal administrative procedures ranging from attempts to pressure and suborn judges and juries to the simple expedient of declaring martial law and removing political trials from civil jurisdiction to the more efficient and effective meth­ ods of military justice. Such procedures, first brought into play during the reign of Alexander II—who expressed surprised fury when he first found out that one of his own new laws prevented him from re­ moving an objectionable judge—were further accelerated under his successor.9 But still this was not considered enough; Alexander III wanted and demanded a complete revamping of the underlying structure of the judicial system. Theoretically, such a demand should have been relatively easy to accomplish—certainly it would have been only a few years previously in the reign of his grandfather. But things had changed in the mean­ time, and irremediably. In Alexander’s attempts to force through ju­ dicial counter-reform and the frustrations he encountered in the pro­ cess, which are examined in detail in chapter 9, we find a case study of the kinds of changes that had taken place over twenty years in the manner of governing the empire. Thus it was that upon his accession Alexander was distressed that many of the same members of the Council who were to process his judicial counter-reforms were themselves either jurists by training or had passed a considerable portion of their service career in the Sen­ ate. (It should be pointed out, even though it seems a matter of which Alexander was not aware, that membership in the Senate, despite the performance of judicial functions there, did not require legal training as a prerequisite nor did it necessarily indicate sympathy with the legal tradition. By the 1880s appointment to senatorial rank was often a stepping stone in an official’s climb through the central bureaucracy, and had become a customary step antecedent to promotion to the State Council or a ministry.) The number of jurists on the Council becomes all the more signifi­ cant when we consider that those appointed to the departments, and particularly to such crucial ones as Law and Civil and Religious Af­ fairs, usually had legal training. Because the Council’s real work was 102

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done in the departments, professional expertise—and very often this meant of a juridical kind—was here most desirable, even essential, so that legal training had become, as a matter of custom and precedent, a common criterion for appointment.10 Yet there was another side to the coin; the emergence of the new type of official did not lead to the disappearance of the familiar Rus­ sian official of the traditional sort. For in addition to the reformers, there existed in the Council, as throughout the government, men and groups whose views and ideas were in sympathy with the autocratic structure, and among these men Alexander could expect to find sup­ porters of traditional values and ways of governing.

PART

III A lexander's A ttempts to Remake the C ouncil

CHAPTER

6 The President and the State Secretary revious sections have noted that the tsar and his supporters per­ ceived the reformers in the government and the underlying con­ ceptions of government they held as a threat to the autocratic struc­ ture of the state. Upon his accession, Alexander III was determined to reassert personal control over the organs of his government as part of the process of undoing the work of the reforms. Control of the State Council and its personnel occupied a major part in this effort, since the tsar needed to have in positions of authority in the Council men whom he could trust or control. Since Alexander trusted no one, it was natural that he should try to appoint men whom he could con­ trol. This section looks at his appointments as one measure of the ex­ tent to which he was able to secure the control he sought. As we have seen, the position of the State Council was ambiguous at best, for its function as the supreme consultative-legislative organ of the autocracy was undercut by contradictory provisions in the funda­ mental laws; powers reserved exclusively to the State Council under one provision were widely dispersed among other organs and entities, including the person of the tsar acting alone, under another. A fur­ ther obstacle to Council effectiveness was the almost constant inter­ ference in Council deliberations by ministers (members ex officio), who even as they submitted their legislative proposals to the Council often tried to circumvent debate either by attempting to persuade the

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tsar to affirm their proposals without further Council involvement or, within the Council, by intimating during the course of discussion that the tsar favored their proposal as it stood. Since in the latter case he could affirm it regardless of the outcome in Council debate (and such a course of action was a regular part of government procedure throughout the workings of the autocracy), members wishing to se­ cure tsarist favor or simply wanting to be on the winning side would often vote along the lines indicated by the minister. Given such com­ plicated factors in the Council’s legislative role, the position of Coun­ cil president could be extremely important. Through his personal in­ teraction with the tsar the president could both guard and augment what authority, dignity, and significance the Council had been able to secure for itself by practice and precedent. That ministers could in fact if not in law communicate with the tsar about their own Council projects emphasizes the importance of the countervailing influence the president could exert.1 As the only direct link of personal communication between the Council and the tsar, the president both exerted an important influ­ ence against ministerial presentations and kept the Council in touch with the ideas and wishes of the tsar firsthand rather than through ministerial insinuations. Further, a strong president could hope to in­ fluence the tsar’s reception of Council proposals by his presentation and clarification of the reasons for recommending approval, rejec­ tion, or modification of ministerial projects. Within the Council itself, the president’s skill as a leader of debate could play a vital role in mar­ shaling diverse groups toward a reconciliation of differences so as to present a more or less united front on legislative matters of particular importance. For all these reasons it was thought to be in the interest of the Council to have a president who enjoyed authority and influence in the government as an independent power in his own right. This is, of course, exactly what the Council had during the long tenure of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich. Konstantin was an intelligent, strong-willed man with a love of vig­ orous action and hard work, a man who held strong beliefs and preju­ dices, who was intolerant of opinions other than his own and did not hesitate to say so in strong language. Korf, at the time chairman of the Council’s Department of Law, characterized Konstantin in a confiden­ tial report on the composition of Council personnel that he drew up in 1869 for Minister of the Interior Valuev. According to Korf, Kon­ stantin had a brilliant and penetrating mind and was good at argu­ ment; his major liabilities came “with the cradle into which he was 108

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born.” He was arrogant, insolent, and possessed of a “coldness to hu­ man feelings and interests and a general disregard for humanity. Fur­ ther, he is often seized with prejudices against some and a partiality for others; he greatly fears the tsar, in part, I think, out of the habit of fearing his late father, who always treated him badly.”2 Whatever the cause, others also noticed this fear, and V. P. Butkov had stressed it to Valuev as early as 1861.3 This fear did not, however, prevent Konstantin from making full use of his position as brother to the tsar whenever he wanted to im­ prove his position in the bureaucracy. Konstantin’s diaries indicate, though, that he could not count on the unqualified help of Alex­ ander II in all instances, and his influence declined after his unsuc­ cessful viceroyship during the Polish insurrection of 1863.4 Nonethe­ less, he seems to have had the tsar’s complete confidence in matters related to the State Council: perhaps the fear with which he ap­ proached Alexander helped to establish that trust. Konstantin’s own assessment in this regard that Alexander II “was always convinced that I loved him and directed matters according to his views” is at­ tested by Alexander’s affirmation of Council minority reports on the two occasions when Konstantin’s opinion was with the minority.5 Konstantin’s authority within the Council is attested by the con­ verse, for with the exception of those two occasions, both concerned with Tolstoi’s educational reforms, he was always able to carry a Coun­ cil majority with him. Thus, though he was often a dictatorial and overbearing president, he was also a powerful spokesman who jeal­ ously and successfully defended the Council’s authority and dignity. This halcyon period ended with Alexander I ll’s ascension of the throne. The new tsar’s fear and hatred of Konstantin were irrational feelings generated not only by his lack of enthusiasm for policies with which Konstantin was closely associated but even more by his aversion to Konstantin’s personality, style, and irregular personal life. As tsesarevich Alexander had disagreed with Konstantin’s administration of the Naval Ministry and the volunteer fleet and with his plans for Rus­ sian naval strategy; his feelings were shared and exacerbated by his tutor Pobedonostsev, who also felt a strong personal antagonism to Konstantin. Further, Alexander, a model family man, looked askance at the grand duke’s long-standing involvement with the dancer A. V. Kuznetsova, a liaison that served as a constant reminder of his father’s affair and morganatic marriage a few weeks after his mother’s death. Alexander never forgot nor forgave this slight to his mother, and he resented the encouragement Konstantin had given to his father in his 109

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affair.6 As the already strained relationship between father and son grew still colder and more formal, the tsesarevich put much of the blame for his father’s policies on Konstantin and the bureaucracy as­ sociated with him. For all these reasons and still others, it was clear from the very beginning of Alexander’s administration that Konstan­ tin must go. Alexander III made no secret of his intentions, and, in­ deed, it soon became fashionable in high Petersburg circles to malign the grand duke and his work.7 Nonetheless, Konstantin did not leave his posts at the Council or the Navy easily, and the tsar had to enlist the help of former Minister of Education Golovnin—a man close to Konstantin whom the tsar therefore disliked—in passing on his re­ quest that Konstantin resign voluntarily. It was thus not until two months after his accession that Alexander was able to secure Konstan­ tin’s removal from his position as Council president.8 Finding a successor was not so hard. Alexander was determined to keep the post from anyone who might threaten his own power; at the same time he would serve notice to the Council that the tsar intended to play a more active and watchful part in its affairs. In his uncle Grand Duke Mikhail, fourth son of Nicholas I, brother of Konstantin and Alexander II, former viceroy of the Caucasus, commander in chief of the Caucasian Army, chief of artillery, and a wholly spineless man, Alexander found a candidate ideally suited to his purposes. Mikhail was stupid, lazy, poorly educated, and, best of all, even more afraid of his nephew than Konstantin had been of his brother— Mikhail’s fear of the tsar soon became all but legendary.9 Mikhail’s diaries reflect the man. His notations concern little more than basic living habits—eating, sleeping, entertaining. Even his com­ ments on the exercise of his official duties are usually limited to a bare statement of the facts: “I studied, received reports.” He mentions his weekly reports to the tsar, sometimes calling him “Sasha,” more fre­ quently “tsar.” The entry for January 1, 1883, is not atypical: “At 8:30 with wife to French Theater. Mini was there and part of family. Slept. Peretts appointed member of Council, Polovtsov to his post.” 10 Mini was Mariia Fedorovna, Alexander I ll’s wife; she liked Mikhail, and Alexander would foist his uncle off on her when he began to find him tiresome. The remainder of the notation refers to the promotion of State Secretary Peretts to a full seat on the Council and his replace­ ment as state secretary by A. A. Polovtsov; since this promotion and appointment involved a fair amount of maneuvering, one might have wished for a more voluble president to tell us about it. But though Mikhail displayed no more noticeable administrative 110

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than he had military talent, and though his archive sheds little light on his activities as Council president, he had insight enough to have some intimation why the tsar had selected him for his new position. “I understand,” he told Polovtsov on one occasion, “why the tsar treats me as he does. He’s afraid 1 might take the position that was occupied by Konstantin.” And on another occasion he managed to sound al­ most resentful: “I can see what he wants: that I sit on the president’s chair like a turkey, with no power of any sort.”11 Mikhail may have sensed that his limited abilities and experience and his inadequate ed­ ucation rendered him less than ht for the post of Council president,12 and his consequent feelings of inferiority were evidenced in timidity and shyness, features that he attempted to cover by treating everyone around with exaggerated politeness and tact (though these were char­ acteristics that many in government found a welcome relief from the overbearing manner of his brother Konstantin).13 His feelings of in­ feriority also helped make Mikhail easy prey to the influence of peo­ ple with personalities stronger than his own, one of whom was his wife, Olga Fedorovna, a former princess of Baden. Though intel­ ligent, she was talkative and gossipy and therefore much disliked by Alexander III, who professed to despise such trivialities, at least in others. Mikhail’s wife thought little of her husband’s performance as Council president and seldom hesitated to tell him so; such support from home can hardly have done much to bolster the poor grand duke’s already sagging self-confidence. During Mikhail’s viceroyship in the Caucasus, far from the center of empire, Olga Fedorovna had set herself up as quite the empress. Not only did she direct all social affairs, she even transacted much of Mikhail’s business, and she found her lessened importance in Petersburg difficult to accept, even to the extent of suggesting that Mikhail resign when he proved unable or unwilling to use his position to solicit favors for her and her intimates. She found the tsar’s dislike for her particularly galling; according to Witte, within his intimate circle Alexander III called her “Auntie Ha­ ber,” an allusion to the rumor that her real father was Haber, the Jew­ ish banker from Baden. Perhaps it was also because of this that Alex­ ander made difficulties about the wedding of his daughter Ksenia to Mikhail and Olga’s son Alexander.14 Mikhail’s temperament and lack of distinction helped make him Al­ exander’s favorite uncle: Alexander could feel unequivocally superior to him and sure of being able to handle him correctly. And there is yet another reason why this son of Nicholas I was a logical choice for the appointment. Nicholas I had an overwhelming sense of duty and de111

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votion to service as he understood it; without these qualities life for him was devoid of meaning. These same principles he drilled into all his children in a manner that shaped their character permanently. Grand Duke Konstantin tells of a characteristic incident that hap­ pened upon the birth of Nicholas Aleksandrovich, the first son of the future AlexanderII. Nicholas asked his assembled sons, among them Mikhail and Konstantin, who this child was. Konstantin answered that it was their future tsar. Nicholas responded; “So you know that this will be your sovereign [Gosudar’] and that you will have to serve him. And you know that you must serve him faithfully and truly, as you are serving me and will serve Sasha. Forget that you are an older uncle, and see him only as sovereign.” 15 On another occasion, in 1835, Nicholas wrote to his son and heir Alexander: “Your three brothers must listen to you as to a father. Be for them more than your uncle Alexander Pavlovich was for me. Now they must serve you faithfully and truly; see to it that they are Rus­ sians. Know this always, that duty molds them.”16 It is ironic but somehow fitting that such training could even be used to thwart the will of the sitting tsar, as Konstantin had in an at­ tempt to retain his seat as Council president. He could not resign, he told Peretts when the latter, at Alexander I ll’s instigation, was trying to persuade him to give up his governmental positions, because “my father told me to serve his successor and the son of that successor.” 17 Such service, of course, the son of that successor was quite willing to do without. In Mikhail, then, Alexander III had, if nothing else, an ally trained personally by the man whose reign Presniakov characterized as “the apogee of autocracy” to be totally subservient in his devotion to the reigning autocrat and his successors. (That such devotion could be carried too far is indicated by Mikhail’s son’s words about his father and his relations with Nicholas II. Mikhail would have been an ideal adviser, claimed the son, except that he felt “his grandnephew was his Sovereign, and as such had to be obeyed implicitly. [Mikhail] never doubted the ultimate wisdom of his grandnephew’s decisions.”) 18 In Mikhail, Alexander created an ally, but one whose primary func­ tion was to stay out of the way. Mikhail’s interest in the affairs of the State Council (and in affairs of state generally) were minimal to begin with and had virtually disappeared by 1885, when he seems to have run out of steam. The death of his dearly loved Olga in 1891 ended completely his personal involvement in government matters. There­ after he devoted himself only to the ceremonial affairs of the artillery, 112

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as whose chief he still functioned, and to his immediate family, partic­ ularly to the arduous task of finding suitable heiresses for his many sons.19 Only rarely was he able to transcend such concerns and carry out his duty to present and explain to the tsar the current business of the State Council. Because of Mikhail’s ineptness, official lines of communication be­ tween the tsar and the Council quickly threatened to break down; Mikhail proved as remiss in conveying the tsar’s wish to the Council as he was in presenting Council positions to the tsar. Other forms of con­ tact not sanctioned by official procedures came to fill the gap, and contacts between the tsar and his ministers on matters of pending leg­ islative projects rapidly increased. At the same time there was a corresponding increase in the tsar’s involvement in Council business. In part this occurred indirectly, through the influence the tsar was able to exert on individual minis­ ters, but it also occurred directly with a frequency that contrasted greatly with the practice of Alexander II. That tsar had been able to trust Konstantin to manage the affairs of the Council in a manner of which he would approve. The new order of things under Alexander III seemed to encour­ age his personal initiatives. Of the fifty-seven instances during his reign when Council deliberations led to the forwarding of majority and minority positions, Alexander III confirmed the majority opin­ ion thirty-eight times and the minority nineteen (33%). In two of the minority cases he actually confirmed an opinion supported by only one member, and in many other cases he felt free to amend both ma­ jority and minority opinions, including even the controversial land captain project of 1889. Mikhail’s opinions, particularly on hotly dis­ puted issues like the university project of 1884 or the land captain statute, and even on questions concerning the Caucasus (an area where the grand duke considered himself an expert), were given little consideration. The significance of Alexander’s activism is more difficult to assess. The only other tsar with a comparable record is Alexander I, who also, as it happens, confirmed minority Council opinions almost ex­ actly one-third of the time (34%, to be precise).20 That Alexander III was making a greater attempt than his two predecessors to assert per­ sonal authority over Council decisions seems evident from the fig­ ures; whether this indicated that he was personally more or less in command is less so. On the face of it, the answer would seem to be less: neither Nicholas I nor Alexander II had found it as necessary as

“3

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

Alexander III to controvert Council opinions. Alexander III, in con­ trast, found it necessary to support minority opinions because he was unable to secure a majority for his position, and perhaps even simply to show that he, as autocrat, could do so—could support a minority of one or even, by rewriting a project personally, no opinion at all other than his own. Such conjecture quickly takes us, however, into a gray area of speculation for which very little hard evidence is available. It is, nonetheless, worth keeping such questions in mind as we examine further the composition of the Council and its mode of operation; it is perhaps even more to the point to remember that this tsar valued the appearance of strength even more than the actuality. With Mikhail in the presidency, Alexander’s official contact with the State Council came not so much through the president as through the Council’s weekly memoranda, which briefly outlined the essential fea­ tures of a project, the debate that had taken place on it, its further disposition, and any modifications introduced by the Council. In the case of disagreements, the memoranda described the differing opin­ ions and listed ministers and other members who had taken each side. These memoranda, compiled in the Chancery of the Council, were in theory extremely important, since officially the tsar based approval or rejection of Council recommendations on the information they pro­ vided. The memoranda had been introduced in 1816 to lighten the tsar’s work load, over Speransky’s objections that they did not provide sufficient information for the tsar to base decisions upon.21 During the most recent reign, of course, the memoranda had been supplemented by the personal authority Grand Duke Konstantin wielded with his brother. Because Mikhail held no such position, authority naturally devolved elsewhere, and the relationship between the tsar and his ministers became proportionally more important. Perhaps as a natural reaction to this change there developed a new center of power in addition to the tsar and his ministers, one situated within the Council itself. Alexander had appointed a weak and inept Council president because he feared powerful and ambitious bu­ reaucrats who might threaten his position. The role of Council presi­ dent, especially when filled by so capable and ambitious a person as Konstantin, was one of the most influential in the empire. By weaken­ ing the president, Alexander contributed to the strengthening of a tendency already present in the Council, particularly among the pro­ fessionally trained bureaucrats both on the Council staff and within the membership itself. Their feelings of professional collegiality and solidarity promoted their sense of the Council as an entity separate 114

T he P resident and the S tate S ecretary

from the tsar or other administrative organs of government and the factions and politics associated with them. The Council itself, that is to say, and particularly professional elements within it, began to man­ ifest more strongly than before elements of corporate consciousness and strength. This manifestation showed itself most strongly in the emergence of the figure of the state secretary (Gosudarstvennyi sekretar) as a representative of the Council as a whole. The state secretary’s most important role was to organize and su­ pervise the flow of business in the Chancery, whose head he was. Al­ though his post was legally independent of the presidency, in practice the secretary functioned as the president’s primary assistant in deal­ ing with Council business. Peretts, state secretary at the time of Alex­ ander’s accession—he had been appointed by Alexander II in 1879 and remained in his position until 1883—emphasized in his memoirs the closeness of the relationship to the president and the need for “complete confidence and agreement” between the two. “The posi­ tion of state secretary,” he went on, “becomes even more difficult when the post of president is held by a grand duke, the brother or uncle of the tsar”;22 this was a situation he was most familiar with, since he worked under both Konstantin and Mikhail. And since the secretary was expected to reconcile different factions within the Council both with each other and with the various ministers, the sec­ retariat was a difficult position, requiring considerable skill and inde­ pendence of mind; as Peretts’s successor Polovtsov remarked when of­ fered the post, “one has to be a politician, for this is a diplomatic post.”23 It was also a post that laid its holder open to the charge of usurping power. Valuev, for one, reported that it was said about the State Council that “in it the members are nothing, the president something, and the state secretary everything.”24The secretary’s various positions and duties gave ample ground for such accusations. In the first place, he was head of the State Chancery, which had been steadily gaining in importance within the government since the foundation of the Coun­ cil, and particularly since the 1860s. Second, the final editing of laws was carried out in the Chancery under his direction, and though all changes at that stage were supposed to be purely editorial, in practice the latitude was often broad, and fundamental changes of form and presentation were not infrequently introduced. In addition, a series of other factors contributed to the importance of the state secretary’s role, particularly the closeness of his relation­ ship with the president of the Council, his influence on Council ap-

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

pointments, and his power to arrange the flow of Council business. Finally, the secretary’s authority was enhanced by the influence he could exert on the autocrat through the composition of the weekly memoranda (and, during Alexander I ll’s reign, of the short outlines of those memoranda), as well as by his membership on various com­ mittees, conferences, and commissions which, though they might bear little direct relation to his position as head of the Chancery, all served to elevate his position in the government.25 In the case at hand, the position of the Council secretary could be­ come more important than that of the presidency itself, not only be­ cause of the ineptness of Grand Duke Mikhail as president, but also because of the ambition and competence of the man whom Alexander appointed in 1883 as state secretary to replace Peretts, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Polovtsov. Polovtsov was an intelligent man, and his influence on Grand Duke Mikhail, who could easily be led and guided, was enormous. In addition, since Mikhail was in any case uninterested in Council matters, Polovtsov’s importance seemed proportionally to increase; certainly this was the case in his own eyes, as is attested by his diary, where he tends to exaggerate the importance of his role. Polovtsov was a graduate of the School of Jurisprudence and had served for thirty-two years in the Senate before assuming the position of state secretary (his appointment underlines Alexander’s depen­ dence on juridical expertise in filling high government positions). He was the first senator to hold that position and thereby broke a long tradition that the state secretary come from the Second Section of His Majesty’s Own Imperial Chancery, which worked on the codification of law.26 As a millionaire in his own right—or rather, his wife’s, for his wealth had been acquired through a most propitious match with the adopted daughter of Russia’s wealthiest financier, A. A. Stiglits— Polovtsov was financially independent and perhaps therefore less vul­ nerable than others to pressures exerted by groups within and with­ out the Council. Polovtsov’s personal political views were conservative and led him to favor an increase in the influence of the wealthy no­ bility in the bureaucracy and the countryside, though his desire for efficient management led him to advocate the abolition of ranks and more bourgeois participation in economic matters. One cannot always trust Polovtsov’s own account of his role in af­ fairs of state. Other sources of the period do not, for instance, bear out his contention that he played the major role in organizing the op­ position to Tolstoi’s counter-reform projects.27 This tendency to self116

T he P resident and the S tate S ecretary

elevation and exaggeration can be explained partly by his thwarted ambition, but his acute awareness of his own role and position in his­ tory is probably also a significant contributory factor. In 1866 Polov­ tsov founded the Russian Imperial Historical Society and functioned as its president from 1879 to 1909. At the Council he hoped to emu­ late Speransky, the first secretary, whose role had been overwhelm­ ingly important. If he could not be a Speransky, Polovtsov hoped to play at least as important a role in government as had former State Secretary V. P. Butkov (1853-1865), during whose tenure a great deal of the work connected with the Great Reforms had been done in the Chancery. That he was suspected of such ambition is indicated by remarks made upon his resignation in 1892, when V. N. Murav’ov became his suc­ cessor and at the same time the codification commission was placed under the jurisdiction of the state secretary. It was then said of Mura­ v’ov that he had created for himself a position à la Speransky “about which Polovtsov could only dream.”28 Polovtsov participated in discussions of such a reform, but he can­ not be held responsible for its eventual execution; nevertheless, an in­ crease of this kind in his power and position would have flattered him enormously. With this act the state secretary received the right to par­ ticipate in the Committee of Ministers, the right to initiate legislation (thus equaling the status of a minister), and most important, increased contact with the tsar because of the more frequent presentation of personal reports.29 Whatever his other ambitions, there is no doubt that Polovtsov was interested in a ministerial post, and on at least one occasion he asked his friend Pobedonostsev to help him become state comptroller (which carried ministerial rank and the responsibility for auditing all state ac­ counts). At times rumors circulating in Petersburg society mentioned Polovtsov as a potential candidate for the post of minister of justice or of interior; in this, as in his other ambitions, he was frustrated, but as state secretary he did his best to play up his own role, even if only for posterity.30 Polovtsov was not blind to the deficiencies of Grand Duke Mikhail; according to the gossip of the time, he would have preferred to see Grand Duke Vladimir, reputedly the most intelligent of Alexan­ der II’s sons, in this post.31 Vladimir would have enhanced the influ­ ence of the Council in governmental matters, and perhaps thereby Polovtsov’s own importance. In the event, Mikhail’s very deficiencies probably gave Polovtsov more direct influence on the tsar than he 1 17

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

could have otherwise attained. Since Mikhail had no interest in mak­ ing regular reports on Council business to the tsar, Polovtsov secured from Alexander permission for personal meetings and the right of private correspondence on matters relating to Council business. The ostensible purpose of such meetings was simply to keep the tsar informed about what was going on, but Polovtsov also hoped that he could at the least counter the direct presentations ministers made to the tsar on their Council projects. He seems consciously to have chosen to represent the Council as an institution rather than any par­ ticular faction within the Council. It is difficult not to speculate fur­ ther and guess that Polovtsov also hoped to play in some measure the role of Konstantin that so little suited Mikhail, that is, to act as a quasi­ independent power broker representing the Council to the tsar on one hand and the tsar to the Council on the other. Whatever Polovtsov’s high hopes, these meetings had little actual effect. In the first place, they had to be arranged behind Mikhail’s back; Mikhail was jealous of his prerogatives as Council president, and between 1883 and 1890 allowed Polovtsov to see Alexander of­ ficially only three times. In the second place, the number of actual meetings, official or unofficial, was very small. Judging from Polov­ tsov’s quite detailed diaries, the secretary managed to secure an au­ dience with the tsar on the average of only four times a year, and even these few meetings did not deal exclusively with Council affairs but included the business of the Historical Society and the Taneev Com­ mission on the Table of Ranks. Polovtsov claimed that it was the enmity of Alexander’s wife that caused the tsar to keep him at a distance, and there is probably consid­ erable truth to his claim. According to Polovtsov, he incurred the tsarina’s enmity because of his refusal to make a loan to one of her favorites, a Sheremet’ev.32 Whatever the truth of this allegation (and it sounds not at all improbable) Polovtsov, though he curried favor with the imperial family and mixed freely with grand dukes and the selfstyled aristocratic circles of Petersburg, was still regarded as a social upstart. His family had been ennobled early in the eighteenth cen­ tury, and though that in itself was no obstacle to social distinction in Russia, the family had not made a name for itself in the service before the appearance of Polovtsov himself. Perhaps because it was made constantly clear to him that he did not belong, Polovtsov had an exceedingly low opinion of the very Peters­ burg society to which he desired full access. His attitude toward the court was not improved by the failure of Alexander III and his wife 118

T he P resident and the S tate S ecretary

to show any particular appreciation either for Polovtsov’s many con­ tributions of art objects to imperial collections or for his putting one of his estates, at his own expense, at the disposal of Alexander III during his meeting with Emperor William II in 1890. That the tsar’s disfavor was not something imagined on his part is indicated by Alexander’s refusal to honor the request of the Countess Panina, wife of the former minister of justice (1837-1861), that he respect the promise made by Alexander II to allow her only grand­ daughter to pass the family name and title on to her son-in-law, Polov­ tsov’s son. Though it is entirely possible that Alexander III, ever con­ scious of his Romanov past, refused the favor mainly because of the Panin’s family legacy—the involvement of N. P. Panin in Paul’s as­ sassination—still one might have expected him to do more for the son of a favored state secretary. With time Polovtsov himself came to op­ pose the Panin request, apparently because he was aware of the extent of resistance to it on the part of the empress and court circles around her; her attitude is well summed up in her characteristic remark, re­ ported by A. A. Kireev, on the occasion of the Polovtsov-Panin wed­ ding. “C’est la dernière des Panins,” she is supposed to have said, “qui épouse le premier des parvenus.”33 Thus while it is possible that Po­ lovtsov’s advantageous marriage combined with his own intelligence may have advanced his career, his social ambition may well have helped keep him from acquiring the influential political position that he desired and probably deserved. Alexander III did little to encourage any increase in the state secre­ tary’s power, particularly since there was no advantage to himself in doing so. He emphasized Polovtsov’s dependence by discouraging personal contact and then by acting with coldness and formality on those occasions when Polovtsov did secure a personal audience. It is difficult to imagine that Alexander’s role in all this was totally ingen­ uous. Although Alexander was not particularly intelligent or dy­ namic, he had a good deal of common sense, and, like many other insecure people, he was calculating in his dealings with those around him. By blowing alternately hot and cold toward Polovtsov and his ambitions, Alexander was able to retain an efficient and talented man who could ensure the smooth flow of business at the Council, while at the same time he effectively forestalled any threat to his own power and authority from the obvious power bases of the presidency and secretariat of the Council. Alexander’s appointment of Mikhail as Council president hardly bears out N. P. Eroshkin’s claim that the tsar appointed a second 119

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

grand duke to head the Council because he valued the Council so highly, but neither does it suggest that Alexander held the Council in contempt or that he intended to ignore it.34 Quite the contrary: it sug­ gests that Alexander felt a need for the Council’s mantle of legitimacy and for the expertise offered by both the membership and the Chan­ cery; this helps explain his attempt through decisive action to reassert personal control over the institution. The removal of Konstantin, then, though it was also an act influenced by passion, can be seen as a rational move directed toward securing such control. The appoint­ ment of a man very much Konstantin’s opposite, the ineffectual Mi­ khail, can be seen as part of Alexander’s attempt to weaken once and for all the independent power of the Council president as it had de­ veloped under Konstantin. That it was Alexander’s intent to weaken the independence of the Council leadership rather than to destroy the Council itself is indi­ cated by his subsequent appointment of the efficient business man­ ager Polovtsov. Polovtsov would see to the smooth flow of Council business, but did not represent any independent power base. Though in his new institutional role he came to see himself as a representative of the Council as an institution, Polovtsov never tried—nor did Al­ exander ever allow him the slightest opportunity—to act even as a power broker, let alone an independent figure in his own right. In this particular, Alexander showed himself a shrewd judge of personality and character. Throughout his careful dealings with Polovtsov, he acted the wary manipulator who clearly preferred to deal with his subordinates by almost any means other than a direct confrontation of wills. Alexander’s very wariness in his relations with Polovtsov (as with others) is an indication of the insecurity he seems to have felt in deal­ ing with the organs of government in general. It was in the nature of things that he could find a Tolstoi for Interior, but not for the Coun­ cil, and he seems to have known this: a man like Tolstoi, personally congenial though he might have been, would have brought Council business and action to an immediate standstill. Given this, Alexander’s dual appointments of Mikhail and Polovtsov seem almost acts of intui­ tive managerial genius. Still, he was left with less than he might have desired, for never was he able to feel the kind of confidence and con­ trol over Council affairs that his father had felt when he had, in effect, given the Council over to Konstantin. And this is why we find the tsar over and over again injecting himself personally into the affairs and deliberations of the Council, even though he did this, characteristi120

T he P resident and the S tate S ecretary

cally, indirectly, through alter egos, and by action at a distance, as in his approval of minority opinions. One further opportunity was open to the tsar in his attempt to assert personal influence over the Council: his power to appoint the membership. His success there would be a decisive factor in assuring a favorable reception for his legislative projects and is the next step in our investigation of his relationship with the Council.

CHAPTER

7 Bureaucratic Intransigence

he most important entities within the Council were the depart­ ments. Here the actual form of legislation was decided upon, and here the reformers had their main power base. The firm en­ trenchment of reformist personnel, and especially of jurists, in the de­ partments at the time of Alexander’s accession helps explain why he considered his own position and that of his planned program of counter-reforms in jeopardy from Council opposition. Alexander’s natural response, we might expect, would be to treat the membership as he had the president and secretary, that is, to restructure it more to his liking. It is worth remembering in this regard not only that it was within his prerogative to rotate membership in the departments every six months, but that this is just what his grandfather and model Nich­ olas I had done to secure the kind of work-oriented membership he wanted.1 In theory Alexander could have broken in a very short time whatever power base the reformers had: it should be instructive to see what he did with that opportunity. During the thirteen years of his rule, Alexander III appointed forty-five persons to department positions. Of these, thirty-eight (84%) served for two years or more, fourteen (31%) for six years or more, and nine (20%) for nine years or more. Of the total, only seven re­ mained in service for less than two years, an indication that Alexander did not try to rotate department memberships as often as permitted by law.2 What makes this surprising is that many of those allowed to remain in office for long periods by no means enjoyed Alexander’s confi-

T

122

Bureaucratic I ntransigence

dence. Of the eighteen who served at various times in the Department of Law, eight were well-known reform bureaucrats associated with the Konstantin group, and one of them, P. A. Shuvalov, was the particu­ lar object of Alexander’s distaste.3 Further, nine of the eighteen had formal legal training, and an equal number were senators. Similarly, there is evidence on record that Alexander III distrusted at least eleven of the eighteen members of the Department of Law. The situa­ tion in the other departments was not markedly different. This state of affairs is all the more surprising when we realize that only four years after Alexander had assumed the throne, he had made a sufficient number of appointments that his own appointees dominated the departments numerically. The surprises continue. Given Alexander I ll’s stated preference for military over civilian bu­ reaucrats, one might expect a high number of military appointments.4 Again, this is not the case. Except in the Department of Economy, where no juridicial expertise was needed and where military members were supposed to represent the interests of the armed forces, military members formed a distinct minority of departmental members; even including their seats on Economy, they seldom made up more than a sixth of the membership. Senators, in contrast to the military, consti­ tuted about half the membership of most departments, and this in spite of Alexander I ll’s repeated expression of distaste for senators. (The prevalence of senators confirms incidentally that appointment to senatorial rank was often, if unofficially, a prerequisite to promo­ tion into the State Council.) (See Table 2.) By 1894, the last year of his reign, Alexander III had appointed every single department member except—and the exception is sig­ nificant—the three department chairmen (see Table 3). The chair­ manship was an important position, as the chairman had a great deal of influence on the fate of projects under his jurisdiction. Usually a minister about to submit a controversial piece of legislation, and particularly legislation of a political nature, would try to come to some kind of preliminary understanding not only with his ministerial col­ leagues, but also with the appropriate department in the Council, and particularly with its chairman. Support from the chairman could be crucial, since his opinion and his leadership of the direction of debate were often the deciding factors in cases in which differences arose. This kind of mediation among a variety of contending parties was a chairman’s most demanding task, and the ability to carry it out well was highly prized.5 Given the potential importance of the chairman’s

Table 2.

Characteristics o f Department Members

Year

Senators

Total civil

1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894

10 8 7 6 9 9 9 9 10 8 8 8 8 9

13 12 13 15 15 16 15 15 16 15 15 16 16 17

Appointed by

Military appointees

Civil appointees Law

Economy

1

3 4 5

— — — — — — — — — —

2 2

flDepartment of Civil and Religious Affairs. ^Includes the three department chairmen.

—

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1

Civil“

— — — — — — — — — —

1 1 1

Total military

Total

Alexander II

3 5 5 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 4 4

16 17 18 18 17 18 17 17 18 17 17 19 20 21

16 13 11 9 6 6 6 7 5 4 4 5* 4* 3*

Alexander III _

4 7 9 11 12 11 10 13 13 13 14 16 18

Table 3 .

Chairmen o f State Council Departments during the Reign o f Alexander III

Department Law

Civil and Religious Affairs Economy

Chairman

Tenure

Appointment to department

Urusov, S. N. Staritskii, E. R Nikolai, A. R Sol’skii, D. M. Ostrovskii, M. N. Titov, V. R

1871-1882 1883-1883 1 8 8 3-1889 1889-1892 1892-1899 1882-1883

1867 1879 1875 1878 1878 1865

Stoianovskii, N. I. Baranov, E. T. Abaza, A. A. Sol’skii, D. M.

1884-1897 1881-1884 1884-1892 1893-1905

1875 1868 1871 1878

Education Moscow University, law School o f Jurisprudence Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo Moscow University Boarding School o f Moscow University School o f Jurisprudence Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo University o f Saint Petersburg Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

role, it seems worth a closer look to determine how it came about that for the duration of Alexander I ll’s rule, all the men who held depart­ ment chairmanships were from the old regime. To be eligible for a department chairmanship, it was necessary to have service seniority and to have attained the highest bureaucratic rank. Promotion into the top ranks was an indicator of merit since each advancement was linked not only to time in grade but also to ed­ ucation and special service distinction. Promotion into the upper four ranks depended on imperial grace alone. Seniority served as an in­ dicator of a man’s experience, and bureaucratic tradition held that in appointments to top positions in the Council, it was to be respected. The rigidly adhered to custom of seating departmental members according to seniority underlines the importance attached to this tradition.6 In the State Council, as elsewhere, the combination of high rank and greatest seniority was likely to be held by the oldest appointees, that is, those whose tenure dated back to the administration of Alex­ ander II. This does not indicate, of course, that Alexander II’s ap­ pointees would necessarily be hostile to the policies of his successor, any more than appointment by Alexander III would indicate support of his programs, but it does point to the possibility of a continuity of attitudes. An examination of the process of appointment at this time will indicate more clearly how the system worked. Candidates for a vacated chairmanship were usually submitted to the tsar by the Council president. The president made his recommen­ dations on the basis of consultation with the state secretary, with the more influential ministers and advisers to the tsar, such as Tolstoi or Pobedonostsev, and particularly with that minister whose area of competence touched upon that of the equivalent department, for co­ operation between chairmen and ministers was desirable and almost essential. In addition, former chairmen would be consulted or would themselves recommend a successor, and occasionally Council mem­ bers would put themselves forward directly for a chairmanship. To take a particular example, Alexander long intended to appoint A. E. Timashev, minister of interior from 1867 to 1878, as chairman of the Department of Law, and three times he attempted to do so. His attempts were foiled each time by resistance within the Council, which succeeded instead in seating, over the tsar’s objections, its own candi­ dates, E. P. Staritskii, A. P. Nikolai, and D. M. Sol’skii. Alexander found the last two particularly unappealing because of their previous association with the Grand Duke Konstantin, while Timashev, in con126

Bureaucratic I ntransigence

trast, was a man the tsar felt comfortable with because of his loyalist monarchic convictions. When Alexander III proposed him for the first time, upon the occasion of a vacancy in 1882, Grand Duke Mi­ khail under the prodding of State Secretary Peretts pointed out that Timashev had neither the necessary education or the juridical train­ ing demanded of the Law chairman (Timashev had no higher educa­ tion than the pension of Moscow University, but neither had the cur­ rent chairman of the Department of Civil and Religious Affairs, V. P. Titov—a circumstance one can surmise the tsar was not told). Alex­ ander retorted that he was under no obligation to follow tradition, but he was outmaneuvered nonetheless when, in a suggestion of com­ promise, the Council proposed a series of alternative candidates known in advance to be unacceptable to the tsar: Abaza, Sol’skii, and then Count Shuvalov. In the end Staritskii, whom the Council preferred to Timashev and whose work for Grand Duke Mikhail in the Caucasus served as a rec­ ommendation of trustworthiness, emerged as a genuine compromise candidate upon whom all factions could more or less agree. Similar maneuvering over the Law chairmanship took place with the appoint­ ment of Nikolai and again in a successful second attempt to seat Sol’skii, where the strategy involved the skillful manipulation and ex­ ploitation of the influence that Pobedonostsev and Tolstoi could exert on the tsar.7 This is not to suggest that Alexander was helpless, or the victim of manipulation on the part of his most trusted advisers. He had other courses available to him that would break the power of the liberals, including the most drastic, the direct dismissal of undesirable person­ nel. In the case of the State Council, however, the customary expecta­ tion that appointment was for life considerably limited the autocrat’s ability to dispose of Council members as he might wish.8 And indeed Alexander feared and disliked the notion of life tenure, whether for judges or Council members. They, as distinct from all other high gov­ ernment personnel, including ministers, were thus put out of his di­ rect reach; he continued to control the size of their livelihood, but only with difficulty could he deprive them of it altogether. Alexander was not the only one to feel this way about life tenure, for fear of such independence was a bureaucratic attitude shared by manyMgE government officials.9 And while it can also be taken as fur­ ther testimony to the insecurity Alexander felt about being able to ex­ ert real leadership through his own person, one must concede that he was in some degree justified in such fears. Gurko has pointed out that 127

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

“like any assembly which is not immediately connected with the gov­ ernment and exercises no direct authority and bears no responsibility for its decisions—which from a legal point of view was no more than advice—the Council was willing to make more concessions to public opinion than were those who were directly connected with the gov­ ernment.”10 In Alexander’s view, such a tendency to “make conces­ sions to public opinion” only exacerbated the danger posed by the lib­ eralism endemic in the Council. In looking at the composition of the departments and what Alex­ ander was able to do about it, one can understand Alexander’s sense that his autocratic prerogatives were being encroached upon. The service requirements of seniority and merit limited his freedom of choice in making appointments to important Council positions. Even more galling, perhaps, was the claim that certain positions demanded a level of expert training that was in itself productive of liberal thought—or at least so the tsar thought. Over and above all this, en­ trenched in the Council were former reformers, many of whom now held important positions. The result was a constellation of forces fre­ quently able to outmaneuver and circumvent the autocrat. One again must ask why Alexander did not get to the root of such obstacles by appointing his own men to the Council at large. The surest means at the tsar’s disposal to make the Council his own was the process of appointment. Alexander’s particular objections were directed toward a loose grouping of reformers—liberals, jurists, senators, and especially the Konstantin men on the Council. One might expect that in an attempt to eliminate these groups, Alexander would appoint to Council ranks only the traditionalists who favored his policy objectives—and to avoid in particular the appointment of jurists and senators. In practice this is not what happened. Questions thus arise about the actual extent of the tsar’s freedom in making ap­ pointments and about the forces operating upon him to influence his decisions on appointments. By the time of Alexander’s accession, it had become customary to appoint Council members from among the higher Saint Petersburg bureaucrats and, in the second half of the century, to appoint senators in particular. Senators were on the whole better educated than other bureaucrats of similar rank, and they also enjoyed a reputation for hard work." Other sources included the diplomatic corps and the mil­ itary services, as well as the wider bureaucracy. Over the course of the nineteenth century patterns of appointment were established that re­ sulted in a relatively constant division of Council members between 128

Bureaucratic Intransigence

the civil and military services; at various times now one and now the other would be given preference in accordance with the tsar’s whims and predilections. The growing preference for senators can be seen in the rise in the percentage of senators from 19-in 1855 to 32 in 1904; the rise in the number of senators drawn exclusively from the civil service is even more striking, almost doubling in the period 1855 to 1904 (from 33% to 63%).12 Theoretically, appointments to the Council were made by the tsar alone on his own initiative, but in practice candidates were custom­ arily proposed to him by the Council president (though the right of the tsar to accept, reject, or appoint his own candidate was always un­ derstood). Alexander III seldom accepted a candidate on the presi­ dent’s word alone. He gave careful scrutiny to proposed appointees and tried to form some personal opinion on their merits. The longer Alexander stayed in office the more critical he became; indeed, at the end of his reign, in May of 1894, he instituted a major change in ap­ pointment policy by creating a special committee to handle all affairs relating to personnel, an act that marked the culminating point in Al­ exander’s many frustrated efforts to assert control over his adminis­ tration.13 An indication of Alexander’s selectivity and care is the rela­ tively low number of appointments he made to the Council during his thirteen-year rule. He appointed a total of 61 new members (includ­ ing ministers who held their positions ex officio), averaging about 5 a year, whereas his son Nicholas II appointed 59 members in the first six and a half years of his reign alone (to 1900). (Alexander I, who had started with a tabula rasa, appointed 82 members over fifteen years, and Nicholas I proportionately fewer— 113 in thirty years; Al­ exander II appointed 138 over his twenty-six years of rule.)14 A variety of forces encouraged the tsar to contravene established procedure in the matter of appointments.15The tsar could, of course, act on his own initiative without prior consultation with the president and thus present the Council with a fait accompli. Alexander did just this in the cases of General I. V. Gurko in 1884, Actual Privy Coun­ cillor A. F. Bychkov in 1890, and General Kh. Kh. Roopdn 1890.16 In other instances the tsar acted under the influence of a court favorite, an influential minister, or some outside person. Thus Alexander I ll’s appointments of Vyshnegradskii in 1886 and of the governors A. K. Anastas’ev and A. A. Tatishchev in 1892 all came as a complete sur­ prise to the State Council, as they had been made at Meshcherskii’s instigation without consultation with anyone else.17 Such instances remained the exception: of sixty-one appointments 129

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made to the Council during Alexander’s rule, fewer than eight were carried out without prior consultation with Council representatives; in the overwhelming majority of instances, customary procedure proved stronger than the tsar’s powers of contravention. This is not to suggest that Alexander issued any kind of blank check to the Council through its president, as Alexander II had in some measure done with Konstantin—indeed, Alexander III made liberal use of his veto power. As could be expected, the ineffectual Mikhail exerted far less per­ sonal direction over the course of Council appointments than had his predecessor Konstantin. Although officially it was Mikhail who rec­ ommended candidates to the tsar, in practice the grand duke most frequently acted not on his own initiative but on that of others—of ministers, of highly placed bureaucratic or military figures, or, above all, at the suggestion of his state secretary, Polovtsov. This last was the most common procedure: the state secretary would either advance his own candidates, as in the instances of F. M. Markus and D. G. Derviz in 1884 or of N. S. Abaza in 1890, or would consult with the appropri­ ate minister or ministers.18 In general, ministers could exert considerable influence on behalf of their candidates either by acting thus through the state secretary or the Council president, or by appealing to the tsar directly. In this way Minister of Interior Loris-Melikov secured the appointment to the Council of his assistant, the liberal reformer Kakhanov, and Bunge when minister of finance asked for and got the appointment of Actual Privy Councillor P. N. Nikolaev, another liberal, in 1886. In addition to such measures, individuals in the civil or military bureaucracies would often directly petition the Council president or even the tsar to ask for an appointment (as did A. Ia. Giubbenet in 1889), and it was common practice for ministers, court favorites, and others to advance their own candidates without any kind of prior consultation.19 Finally, Council chairmen also had a voice in appointments. All of these per­ sons and agencies were able to exert varying amounts of influence on the tsar; during the course of Alexander I ll’s rule, the influence of State Secretary Polovtsov, acting through Grand Duke Mikhail, was the most constant. This meant in practice that the State Council itself retained considerable control over the type of appointee who came before the tsar. When Alexander III began his rule in 1881, the State Council (whose size was not fixed by law) was made up of seventy-five mem­ bers, of whom thirteen were ministers who held their seats ex officio. 130

B ureaucratic Intransigence

By the end of his reign, as we have seen, Alexander had appointed sixty-one new members, including ministers. During the first year alone he appointed fourteen members, though this was an excep­ tional number marking the beginning of a new administration. None­ theless, the turnover was rapid. In 1889, after eight years of Alex­ ander’s rule, only twenty-four of the fifty-two Council members who voted on the land captain statute were holdovers from the reign of Alexander II. By 1894, forty-seven of sixty-eight members had been appointed by Alexander III. One can thus safely affirm that by the middle years of his reign Alexander’s appointees amounted to about half the membership of the Council. An examination of the relative number of military and civilian ap­ pointees will give a clearer picture of Alexander’s course. Of the sixtyone appointments made between 1881 and 1894, thirty-four were drawn from the civil service and twenty-seven from the military. I have been able to find data on the education of thirty of the thirtyfour civilians. Sixteen were senators, and sixteen (not the identical group, but overlapping with it) had a legal education (seven at a uni­ versity and nine at the School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg). Thus about half of the appointees from the civil service had no con­ nection with the judicial branch, but were drawn predominantly from the Ministries of Interior, Education, Foreign Affairs, and His Maj­ esty’s Own Chanceries. Despite Alexander’s repeated imprecations against jurists (the memoir literature is replete with his comments), the tsar nevertheless was unable to block completely what he consid­ ered the excessive frequency of juridical appointments. By 1890 Alexander’s feelings had crystallized sufficiently for him to announce flatly that he would in the future appoint “no more bu­ reaucrats from the juridical department, but instead primarily men who have occupied the post of governor and therefore acquired prac­ tical information about real life in the provinces.”20 Such “practical men” would come mainly from the military services, since it had long been a tradition (except in the reign of Alexander I) that governor­ ships were filled by military men. Alexander’s new policy was in line with the advice given him by Meshcherskii, who had long advocated such a course and was a loud proponent of the advantages expressed by those marvelous catchwords “practical experience.”21 Meshcherskii was not alone in advising Alexander to go outside the inner Saint Petersburg circles for Council appointments; Peretts and Polovtsov had themselves been pressing for some time the suggestion that the tsar appoint more men with a background of work in the 131

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

provinces, though it was not governors they had in mind.22 It is hardly possible not to imagine Meshcherskii—and perhaps even Alexander— chuckling over the neat reversal according to which it was possible at one and the same time to appear to follow advanced opinion while promulgating a policy that, if successful, would help tip the balance of forces in the Council in favor of loyal traditionalists who would be likely to support strongly the program of counter-reforms. Alexander had long been a partisan of the governors, considering them just the sort of no-nonsense hard-nosed administrators he fan­ cied himself to be. He kept himself informed about their wishes, ideas, and concerns through their annual reports, which he studiously read and annotated. In 1881 he ordered these reports printed up and distributed to all ministers prior to meetings of the Committee of Ministers, and Yaney has pointed out that he was the first tsar to use these reports not as a bludgeon against individual ministers, but to promote interministerial coordination and discussion in the hope of improving communication between the central ministries and their provincial agencies.23 Governors constituted a special interest group of their own within the bureaucracy, and there was a well-known set of demands for which they inevitably and insistently clamored every year: greater power and authority, greater support from the center, and the abro­ gation of independent institutions of every sort from zemstvos to the judiciary, all of which were obstacles to the proper execution of their duties to the state. As William McNeil has noted, the tendencies of the center are often exaggerated in the practice of the periphery, and some governors were in this sense more tsarist than the tsar, not only in their enthusiastic support of arbitrary practices of government, but also in their tendency to see sedition lurking in every nook and cranny. Meshcherskii’s prodding in favor of such practical men must have struck a sympathetic chord in Alexander III, so that it comes as some­ thing of a surprise to find that in spite of the sternly worded declara­ tion from the tsar, of the fifteen appointments he made to the Council after 1890, only five were men with a military background and pre­ vious administrative experience either in the gubernatorial apparatus or as other highly placed administrators; an additional three appoin­ tees had indeed served as governors, but with a civil service back­ ground. Of the eight men appointed under the new policy, only two fully met the approval of Alexander III: Senator Tatishchev, the for­ mer governor of Penza, and Anastas’ev, governor of Chernigov. Both were creatures of Meshcherskii, who put them forward with the rec132

B ureaucratic Intransigence

ommendation that they knew just how to deal with the peasantry, since they were of the firm opinion that “the people fear nothing apart from birch rods [rozgt]: but where there is whipping, there one finds order, a great deal less drunkenness, respect of son toward fa­ ther, and greater welfare overall.”24 The appointment of such brutish men (and especially of Anastas’ev) caused a great stir and considerable dissatisfaction in court cir­ cles and within the bureaucracy, particularly since advancement from a gubernatorial post directly into the Council was without precedent.25 The Council soon developed its own strategy to deal with problems caused by a policy that resulted in such appointments, and from that point made certain to propose its own “practical” candidates in close consultation with the appropriate ministers. The remaining six military and gubernatorial appointments were more to its liking. Of these six, two were indeed military adminis­ trators, but their experience had come not in the provinces but the capital: one had been chief military procurator and the other, N. N. Obruchev, was an intelligent and much respected military theorist who was associated with the reformers and heartily disliked by Alex­ ander. One other, N. S. Abaza, was a former governor—of Tambov, Riazan, and Kherson—but he was also a senator and a civilian with reformist leanings and associations to whom Alexander also objected. Three other appointees, N. O. Rozenbakh, I. S. Kakhanov, and Prince G. S. Golitsyn were former military governors, none of whom enjoyed the special favor of the tsar. The initiative for their appointments again had come from the Council, which in defiance of Alexander’s wishes had managed to turn the newly announced appointment pol­ icy to its favor. As for the remaining eight appointments made after 1890, Alex­ ander was again unable to make his wishes prevail, particularly with regard to his determination to appoint no more jurists. Of the eight, four had a university education or training at the elite lycée at Tsarskoe Selo, the background of one is indeterminate, and three were ju­ rists. Two of these last three show just how difficult it was for Al­ exander to hold to his antijurist stand, since both were in a sense involuntary appointments. One was the new minister of justice, N. V. Murav’ov, whose position virtually mandated legal training, and the other was Polovtsov (named to the Council in 1892), whose promotion into the Council after service as state secretary was by this time a cus­ tomary move. A discussion of Alexander’s appointments would not be complete 133

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

without mention of a few particularly unusual ones. In 1883 he ap­ pointed two marshals of nobility, the well-known public figure G. P. Galagan and A. V. Bobrinskii. Galagan held a law degree from Saint Petersburg University and had been an active participant in the for­ mulation of the decree of emancipation, serving first as a member of the Editorial Commissions and then supervising the execution of the decree in his home province of Chernigov, where he also served as a judge and marshal of the nobility. After this period he participated in most of the commissions and committees set up to regulate further the status of the peasantry. His appointment came as the result of State Secretary Peretts importuning the tsar, largely on what we would today call public-relations grounds, arguing that it would intro­ duce variety into the Council. Bobrinskii’s appointment came as the direct result of a suggestion from Tolstoi, then minister of interior. This was the year of the tsar’s official coronation in Moscow and Tolstoi conceived of Bobrinskii’s appointment as a way for the tsar to show the special favor in which the nobility was held. Bobrinskii held a degree from Moscow Univer­ sity and had begun his state service in the Chancery of the Council in 1854. Later he served both in the diplomatic corps and in the prov­ inces, earning an honorable service record; in 1875 he was elected marshal of the Moscow nobility and received at the same time the rank of actual privy councillor, second degree; ultimately he achieved the rank of privy councillor, third degree. Both Bobrinskii and Galagan had achieved high civil service rank and had fulfilled the customary requirements for appointment, so that they encountered no opposition from within the Council on those scores.26 Satisfaction was such, in fact, that Alexander was en­ couraged by various people to make more such appointments, but he resisted, probably because of fear of establishing some sort of “consti­ tutional” precedent by raising expectations of the regular appoint­ ment of men involved intimately in the provincial life of the people; he feared the constitutional implications even of inviting informed men to give advice on legislative proposals before departments of the Council, though receipt of such testimony was a right granted by law.27 The appointment of Vyshnegradskii in 1886 was another unusual one. Vyshnegradskii was a member of the council in the Ministry of Education, and a well-known—not to say notorious—financial wizard with a shady reputation. Vyshnegradskii’s appointment was another of Meshcherskii’s suggestions. It was seen as a necessary preparatory 134

Bureaucratic I ntransigence

step in the grooming of Vyshnegradskii for the Ministry of Finance, where he worked from 1887 to 1892—it was hoped he would exercise some of his wizardry on the Russian economy. Vyshnegradskii was given a concurrent appointment to the Department of Economy, whose chairman was the reformer A. A. Abaza. Both Abaza and Minister of Finance Bunge, who had not been con­ sulted about Vyshnegradskii, had intended to press for the appoint­ ment of their friend and coworker from the 1860s, K. I. Domontovich, who was working at the time in the Ministry of Finance. Meshcherskii, who told Alexander that he had special knowledge of “le terrain et la personne d’Abaza,” informed Alexander about these intentions and attached to Domontovich the label “highly red.” He also mentioned to the tsar that there existed rumors that Abaza might resign in protest if Alexander were to go ahead with the Vyshnegrad­ skii appointment—Grand Duke Mikhail attested to much the same thing—and on his own account added Bunge’s name to the list of possible resignations. Alexander’s response was what Meshcherskii wanted and, no doubt, expected. “This [the resignations],” he said, “would be the escapade of a party, and I will not allow it.”28 Rumors such as these served to keep Alexander’s suspicions of the liberals con­ stantly alive, since he feared most of all the possibility of concerted group action. In the event, little happened. Vyshnegradskii’s appointment was deeply resented, perhaps more than anything because of his status as a complete outsider to the sys­ tem of rank and hierarchy; if the tsar could once violate rank and hi­ erarchy and go outside established patterns of career service, he could do it again. But he did not do it again— not because the bureaucrats had intimidated him, but because of his own perceptions. He wanted after all, as much or even more than they to avoid the involvement of outsiders in the councils of government. In imperial Russia, no out­ siders were in the immediate entourage of the sovereign as members either of his service or of his court. At this time, still—and later, too— the bureaucrats had no fear of being supplanted, superseded, or up­ staged by the regular appointment of high-level officials or function­ aries from outside the closed ranks of their own service. It can be argued that we have here another instance of what seems a common phenomenon in the workings of the autocracy at this time: namely, that a protective response to a perceived challenge had an effect opposite from that intended. In this case, tsar and bureaucracy alike, though for differing reasons, worked unwittingly together to restrict access to high government positions. The result was the disl S5

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

couragement (though still not total prevention, as the course of events in post-1905 Russia shows) of the growth of that interchangeable government-business-academic-industrial-financial-military “power elite” that was at this time developing with rapidity in Western Europe and the United States and which, whatever its drawbacks, can serve as a major contributor to social and political stability.29 Unusual appointments of the type of Galagan, Bobrinskii, and Vyshnegradskii were so few that they had little effect on the composi­ tion of the Council. That Alexander felt dissatisfied with the course of appointments and his control over personnel in general is indicated by his creation in 1894, only a few months before his death, of the special committee on personnel mentioned earlier in this chapter. This committee was to control all matters relating to personnel, in­ cluding promotion, awards, and dismissal, and was to operate within His Majesty’s Own Imperial Chancery, superseding the Committee for the Consideration of the Presentation of the Highest Awards, es­ tablished only two years before. There is enough evidence about the formation of this committee to suggest that the tsar acted largely from pique provoked by his in­ ability to reassert autocratic control over his own high officials. In do­ ing so, he acted in a truly autocratic manner, with no prior consulta­ tion with his ministers, whose opposition he quite correctly foresaw. The establishment of the new committee was punishment and re­ venge not only for the manner in which his high officials, and particu­ larly ministers, had been able to circumvent his wishes on appoint­ ments, but also for the opposition he had encountered on all sides in his attempts to reform the civil service overall, starting with the aboli­ tion of the Table of Ranks. This was a possibility fruitlessly discussed by the Taneev Commission (1883-1885), and one that was fiercely re­ sisted by top governmental personnel as a threat to their vital inter­ ests. In his conversations with Polovtsov, himself a member of the Commission, Alexander made it clear that he attributed the failure of the Commission directly to his ministers, who resented and resisted the prospect of losing the hold over their subordinates that direct con­ trol of rewards and punishments gave them. The creation of the new committee did little to improve things; although it was supposed to standardize and regularize service promotions and awards (as we have seen, there was little need for procedures to govern personnel brought in at high levels from the outside), in practice it did little more than introduce still more red tape into a system already clogged and increase the general confusion regarding policy. This came about 136

Bureaucratic I ntransigence

partly because the decree implementing the new committee was in conflict with existing legislation—it had been hastily and sloppily drafted behind the backs of high-level government personnel in order to circumvent their opposition. An even greater obstacle to im­ plementation was that the bureaucratic structure the decree was sup­ posed to reform and make more efficient was the very same bureau­ cracy that had to administer it; in such circumstances, obstruction was a matter not of second, but of first nature, starting with efforts to block the publication of the decree.30 From all this we can see that Alexander was never able to exert con­ trol over the appointment process: here the Council proved strong enough to resist his wishes. This strength, though, was the strength of intransigence only. It was based on the rigidities of bureaucratic pro­ cess and the procedures of providing paper credentials; it lay not in any shift in the balance of power between tsar and Council, but more in the ability of each to thwart the other on specific, limited issues that touched on little except in-house affairs. When Alexander ended his reign, the Council membership re­ mained largely what it had been at the time of his accession, with re­ formist officials and especially jurists very much in evidence, particu­ larly on the departmental level. It was a typical move—and one that can be found in institutions far removed in space and time from late imperial Russia—that he should try to circumvent the bureaucratic stubbornness he encountered through the creation of a new bureau­ cracy, one ostensibly more directly subject to his personal control. The creation of this new bureaucratic enclave to oversee the bureaucracy achieved nothing; this was most directly owing to Alexander’s death, but we can safely surmise from its subsequent fate that even had he not died this new institution would have given Alexander no more control over his bureaucratic servants than he had enjoyed before. Upon Alexander’s death, his successor received a proposal to abolish the oversight committee only four months into his reign. Since he could not bring himself to abrogate fully what his father had just cre­ ated, he agreed only to an immediate curtailment of its functions.31

137

CHAPTER

8 A Social Profile of the Membership

s w e have seen , A le x a n d e r III had serious m isgivin gs abou t th e policy o rien ta tio n o f th e w ell-en tren ch ed refo rm ers in th e State C ou n cil, particularly the legal p rofession als a m o n g th em . N o n e th e less, in spite o f rep ea ted attem p ts to ch a n g e th e c o m p o sitio n o f State C ou n cil p e rso n n el th ro u g h care in selectin g new m em b ers, th e tsar was thw arted in his efforts by a variety o f in stitu tion al, political, and p ro fessio n a l factors. It is tim e n ow to turn to an analysis o f th e social characteristics o f State C oun cil m em b ers d u rin g and a ro u n d th e tim e o f A le x a n d e r ’s rule: that is, ed u ca tio n , service seniority, an d social and e co n o m ic b ack grou n d . We shall try to d ete r m in e w h ere th ese p e o p le had co m e from to occu p y such h igh p osition s in th e g o v e rn m e n t o f th e e m p ir e — th e h igh est that cou ld be o b ta in ed th ro u g h service rather than birth — and w hat their c h a n g in g b ack grou n d and status su g g est abou t ch a n g es in th e ad m in istration o f th e e m p ire d u rin g th e latter h a lf o f th e n in eteen th century. A prelim in ary glance at this m aterial indicates that A lex a n d er was not w holly w ron g to fear a profession ally o rien ted bu reaucracy as a locus o f pow er sep arate from and in d e p e n d e n t o f th e autocracy. T h e profile o f th e State C oun cil show s a g ro u p c o m p o se d p red o m in a n tly o f p ro fessio n a l service bu reaucrats w ho claim ed specialized ex p e rtise acquired th ro u g h lo n g and specialized training. D u rin g this tim e th eir

A

iS8

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership

strongest loyalties were formed by notions of service and duty deter­ mined by and within their own professional ranks. This official spent his entire professional career in a service occupa­ tion in which he acquired experience to temper his expertise. He de­ rived his social status and income from the service, and in this sense he was often more dependent on the grace of his superiors—and in the State Council, this meant in practice the tsar—than his predeces­ sors of half a century before had been. But at the same time, the bu­ reaucracy of which he was a part was increasingly becoming a career service, and its claims to professionalism and expertise gave it—and him through it—a quasi-independence that was new among the servi­ tors of the tsar. An examination of the social demography of the State Council and of the uppermost three ranks of the bureaucracy from which its mem­ bers were drawn can tell us much about the gradual but steady evolu­ tion toward a professionally based civil service. Insofar as data are available, we shall follow the Council from roughly 1853 *n the reign of the first Nicholas to roughly 1905 in that of the second. In 1853 the educational level was lower in the State Council than in the upper ranks of the bureaucracy as a whole, for during this period there sat on the Council a good many men who had begun their ser­ vice in the days when it had been customary to appoint grandees of the empire rather than career bureaucrats. Over the course of the next fifty or so years we find an increasing trend toward professional­ ization, as indicated by education, career experience, and careerdependent status and income. Since during this same period it had become increasingly common—to such an extent indeed that in Alex­ ander I ll’s reign Vyshnegradskii was the single exception—for Coun­ cil members to reach their position only from within the bureaucracy, the changing status of the Council can tell us a great deal about the structure of the upper levels of the bureaucracy as a whole. By the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century a majority of Coun­ cil members had begun their service under Nicholas I, when increas­ ing emphasis wâs being put on the creation of a cadre of professional officials by linking service advancement to education. This linkage was an old, if intermittent, tradition. It had begun under Peter the Great, had in varying measure fallen into abeyance under his suc­ cessors, and then had been revived and given additional impetus by Alexander I, who had significantly expanded the educational net­ work of the empire for the express purpose of providing a core of 139

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

trained officials for a rationalized organization of the bureaucracy based on a tie between education and bureaucratic advancement.1 In looking at the career patterns of State Council members, we can use formal education and length of service prior to appointment to measure the level of training and experience characteristic of ap­ pointees. In 1853 under Nicholas I, the Council was staffed largely by men who had little or no formal education. Of the 55 members who sat in the Council in 1853, 38 (69%) had received their education ex­ clusively through tutoring at home; although the quality and level of that education varied widely, it was usually not equivalent to formal secondary schooling. Seven members (13%) had received formal sec­ ondary education, and another 10 (18%) had completed a course of higher education at an elite school (lycée or equivalent) or university.2 Much of the reason for this low educational level lies in Nicholas I’s predilection for military appointees. Of the 148 Council members who held their tenure during Nicholas’s rule (some of them holdovers from Alexander), 103 were men with army experience, and of these 76 (74%) had served in the restricted ranks of the Imperial Guards.3 One can conjecture that a common military and particularly Guards service with its associated ties of birth and status served as the basis for Council collegiality in the Nicholaian era in much the same way that school and service ties and service experience in the early period of the reforms formed the basis for collegial relations in the time of Al­ exander III. It hardly needs saying that such disparate early experi­ ences helped to produce very different kinds of men with equally dif­ ferent perceptions of the needs and nature of the empire they served. These differences would only be further emphasized by the associ­ ated differences between the rural, gentry-aristocratic orientation of a group closely associated with large agricultural holdings and that of the more urbanized, narrowly professional bureaucrats of the later period whose far more insecure social status and income were in most cases directly linked with their service careers. (And as we shall see, the rise in the educational qualifications of the appointees under Alexander II and especially under Alexander III and Nicholas II seems to have been accompanied by a corresponding decline in social origin at birth.) The educational background of Alexander I ll’s Council differs sharply from that of the Nicholaian era.4 By the 1880s 72 percent of Council members had a higher or elite education (18% under Nich­ olas only some twenty-five to thirty years before), and only a single member received the whole of his education at home (compared with 140

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership Table 4.

Education o f Alexander I l l ’s Appointees to State Council Civil appointees

Education

Higher" Elite* Secondary' Home Total Legal*

Military appointees

Total

(N)

%

(AO

%

(AO

%

(15) (14) ( 1)

50 47 3

( 7) ( 5) (14) ( 1) (27) (— )

26 19 52 3 100

(22) (19) (15) ( 1) (57) (16)

39 33 26 2 100 28

—

(30) (16)

—

100 53

—

Completed a full course at a university, military academy, or technical institute. Of the civil appointees, 5 went to Moscow University, 6 to Saint Petersburg University, 3 to other universities, and 1 to a technical institute. All of the military appointees were trained at the Nikolai Academy of General Staff; 3 of them were also graduates of the Corps of Pages. ^Includes a Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo (since 1844 the Imperial Alexander Lycée), the Corps of Pages School, and the School of Jurisprudence. These schools trained students for service in specific branches of the government (Tsarskoe for the Ministry of Interior, Jurisprudence for Justice and the Senate). Graduates received greater services privileges than university graduates. They entered service at the upper ranks, which was crucial to their later careers, since in-service promotions were usually based on seniority. Rank privileges were also graded according to class standing (compare the role of the Lycée of Henry IV in France). Of the civil appointees, 4 were graduates of Tsarskoe Selo, 9 of Jurisprudence, and 1of the Corps of Pages. All the military appointees were graduates of the Corps of Pages. fThe civil appointee was trained at a private educational institution. Six of the mili­ tary appointees were trained in the cadet corps, 6 in specialized military schools, and 2 at gymnasiums. Appointees with legal training are shown again separately because of their impor­ tance as a group.

69% under Nicholas). Such figures confirm Pintner’s findings that formal education and rank were closely related by the third quarter of the century and that education had become the primary route to a successful service career that ended at the highest levels;5 they also demonstrate the great impact upon the civil service of the expanded educational network created under Alexander I. (See Table 4.) Given Alexander I ll’s intense dislike for jurists, it is interesting that this group constitutes the single largest subcategory of officials ap­ pointed to the State Council. During his reign jurists made up over a quarter (28%) of total membership and an even greater fraction of 141

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

the departmental membership, where they exercised an influence far beyond their numbers. Indeed, it is an indication both of juridical presence and of preferment in the civil service that every second Coun­ cil appointee had some legal training. (It is worth noting, though, that jurists never had the stranglehold of the Prussian Juristenmonopol, be­ cause education at an elite school remained in Russia, as in France, a distinct and separate path to higher office.)6 The disparity between the educational level of civilian and military appointees is striking; while 97 percent of the civilian Council ap­ pointees had received higher or elite education, this was true of less than half (45%) of the military members. This relatively low educa­ tional level was one of the factors keeping military men out of most departmental appointments, where a measure of professional exper­ tise had become the norm. In later years this changed rapidly. The educational opportunities open to military officers expanded with the establishment of military academies in the late 1850s and the 1860s, and as a direct result, under Nicholas II the percentage of military members with higher or elite education had risen to 58. The percentage of members with legal training under Nicholas II remained constant at 28, while the general link between professional training and service advancement and career success continued. The change in members with higher or elite training from 72 percent un­ der Alexander III to 76 percent under Nicholas II occurred pri­ marily among higher military appointees.7 (See Table 5.) In summary, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, to be promoted into the higher ranks of the Russian service or appointed to a highly placed institution such as the State Council, advanced train­ ing and education were necessary (see Table 6).8 Education was not, however, the only indicator of an official’s level of professional expertise—length of service was also supposed to be an indicator of his status as a seasoned expert. It will hardly surprise anyone to find that length of service prior to appointment was not greatly dissimilar among State Council members from the prereform period of Nicholas I (74.8% with more than thirty years’ service) and among those from the postreform period of Alexander III (73% with more than thirty years’ service, 56% with over forty-five (see Table 7). For our purposes, the actual number of years served is not as im­ portant as the tsar under whom an official began his service career. Of fifty-five officials appointed by Alexander III to the State Council, one (1.8%) began service under Alexander I, forty-eight (87%) under Nicholas I, and six (11%) under Alexander II. If we separate military 142

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership Table 5.

Education o f Nicholas II’s Appointees to State Council

Education

Higher“ Elite* Secondary' Hom e Total Legal'

Military appointees

Civil appointees

Total

(N)

%

(AO

%

(AO

%

(26) (15) ( 5) (2rf) (48) (19)

54 31 10 4 99 40

( 6) ( 6) ( 7) ( 2) (21)

29 29 33 9 100

—

—

(32) (21) (12) ( 4) (69) (19)

46 30 17 6 100 28

“Of the civil appointees, 14 went to Saint Petersburg University, 9 to Moscow Univer­ sity, 2 to other universities, and 1 to a technical institute. Eleven of the 23 Saint Peters­ burg and Moscow graduates held law degrees. Five of the military appointees went to military academies, and 1 to a technical institute. *Six of the civil appointees were graduates of Tsarskoe Selo, 1 of the Corps of Pages, and 1 of Jurisprudence. One of the military appointees was a graduate of Tsarskoe Selo, and 5 were graduates of the Corps of Pages. "Three civil appointees were trained at gymnasiums, 1 at a private institution, and 1 at a specialized military school. Two of the military appointees were graduates of the cadet corps and 5 of specialized military schools. dN o education listed in service records. "Appointees with legal training are shown again separately because of their impor­ tance as a group.

Table 6.

Education o f State Council Personnel, 1897

Education

(A0

%

Higher“ Elite* Secondary' Home Total Legal1'

(29) (34) (13) ( 7) (83) (28)

35 41 16 8 100 34

“Moscow University (8), Saint Petersburg University (12), other universities (2), Nikolai Academy of General Staff (7). ^Tsarskoe Selo (9), Corps of Pages (9), Jurisprudence (16). "Private school (1), gymnasium (1), lycée (1), cadet corps (6), specialized military schools (4). ‘'Saint Petersburg University (12), Jurisprudence (16). !4 3

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil Table 7.

Prior Service o f Alexander I l l ’s Council Appointees

Years o f service

Civil appointees (AO

2 0 -2 4 14% 2 5 -2 9 3 0 -3 4 17% 3 5 -3 9 4 0 -4 4 4 5 -4 9 56% 5 0 -5 4 5 5 -5 9

Table 8.

Military appointees (AO

Total (AO 3

3 1

5 5

6 9 2

6 8 6

12 17 8

3

3 1

6 1

4 5

—

—

Entry into Service o f Alexander I l l ’s Appointees to State Council

Years o f entry 1 8 2 0 -1 8 2 4 1 8 2 5 -1 8 2 9 1 8 3 0 -1 8 3 4 1 8 3 5 -1 8 4 0 1 8 4 1 -1 8 4 5 1 8 4 6 -1 8 5 0 1 8 5 1 -1 8 5 5 1 8 5 6 -1 8 6 0 1 8 6 1 -1 8 6 5 1 8 6 6 -1 8 7 0 1 8 7 1 -1 8 7 5

Civil appointees (AO

Military appointees (N)

Total (AO

1 1 2 8 1 6

1 1 3 14 7 12 11 2 1 2 1

—

1 6 6 6 11 1 1 2 1

—

1 — —

—

and civilian appointments, we find significant differences only among the number who began service under Alexander II: five of the civil­ ians, and only one of the military. (See Table 8 for exact figures.) One reason military members had an average earlier date of entry into the service is that they entered the service when they were younger. They served relatively longer before reaching appointment to the Council because, among other reasons, their education generally went no higher than that offered by the cadet corps or one of the technical military schools; higher education at various military academies took place in service. Though it took longer for civilian would-be bureau144

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership

crats to finish their formal education, they then entered the service at a correspondingly higher rank.9 The stability of this aspect of the system is further confirmed by a glance at the service experience of Council personnel serving under Nicholas II in 1903.'° Service entry information is available on eightynine members; of this group an astonishingly high number (fifty-two men, or almost 60%) had begun their service under Nicholas I, thirtyseven (41.5%) under Alexander II. Again, the average military ser­ vice is longer than the civilian. Twenty-two (of thirty, or 73%) of the military had begun under Nicholas I, and thirty-one (of fifty-six, or 55%) of the civilians. (Two of the civilians, I. S. Kakhanov and P. I. Salomon, had been in service for an amazing sixty-six years and one, I. A. Krivskii, for fifty-eight years.) (See Table 9.) It is hardly striking that in 1903 fewer (60%) of Nicholas II’s Coun­ cil appointees had entered service under Nicholas I, some fifty years before, than under Alexander III (87%); what is extraordinary is how many of them had done so. The figures demonstrate with great clarity that the Council—and the associated levels in the higher bureaucracy from which it was drawn—was a gerontocracy, with all the advantages and disadvantages such a structure entails. In a period of great sta­ bility, one would expect almost any mode of governmental organiza­ tion to work somehow, and perhaps even reasonably well. But this was anything but a stable period in the empire; rapid change was the norm everywhere except in the organization and conduct of govern­ ment. Appointments to the State Council were based upon a combina­ tion of merit and seniority, and, in the manner usual to bureaucracies. Table 9.

Year o f Entry o f State Council Personnel in 1903

Year o f entry

Civil appointees (A0

1 8 3 5 -1 8 4 0 1 8 4 1 -1 8 4 5 1 8 4 6 -1 8 5 0 1 8 5 1 -1 8 5 5 1 8 5 6 -1 8 6 0 1 8 6 1 -1 8 6 5 1 8 6 6 -1 8 7 0 1 8 7 1 -1 8 7 5

2 6 4 14 9 8 5 3

Military appointees (AO

—

16“ 6 7 2 — —

31

51

“Includes all officials entering service before 1850. 145

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

merit was recognized only in those who had considerable seniority and the rank that came with it. Exceptions were few and were restricted to extraordinary men of the type of Sergei Witte, who reached minis­ terial rank and thus ex officio membership in the Council at the age of forty-three. The more usual course was a slow rise through the ranks and appointment at an advanced age, a procedure with predictable enough results that the age and infirmity of Council members were widespread objects of derision. “My uncle, the general,” says one of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s characters, “had a fit of apoplexy, so he became a Senator; he lost his sight, and then he was made a member of the State Council. If he can only have a new accident, he will die a minister.”11 Though the system could be bent upon occasion in recognition of exceptional talent and ability without the accompanying rank, the bendings were few; it was not unusual to find among Council mem­ bers men who were too infirm to carry out their duties, and certainly many of them were past the zenith of their intellectual and creative powers. As could be expected, many of these accepted the guidance of the more energetic, active, and interested of their colleagues. Such a gerontocracy—which had its parallel, one might point out, in the French Council of State of the same period—with decades of active service behind it, provides a possible clue to the apparent stability of the empire in its waning years. The very existence by the mid­ nineteenth century of a career civil service assured the empire of a measure of continuity that kept the processes of government on a steady course even while all else was undergoing change with a rapid­ ity that sometimes suggested chaos. The problem, given the condi­ tions of the time, is that such stability was more a liability than an asset and constituted in fact more stasis than stability. As we shall see, the new men coming in during the last years of Nicholas I’s rule—the very ones who constituted such a surprisingly large bloc of Council members in the time of Nicholas’s grandson and even great-grandson, were themselves in large measure the products of the social change the empire was undergoing. They came into the service with new ideas and in a short time effected great and signifi­ cant change. But having attained high office themselves, few of them helped to encourage the development of a like-minded generation of younger officials to replace them. The result very often was that re­ gardless of their virtues as young men, they became unable to func­ tion as innovators capable of dealing in a creative manner with the new problems confronting a still changing empire. As old men they 146

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership

did well what old men do well: they warned and worked against chang­ ing too rapidly an order they had themselves helped to construct. As Council members, all of these men held the highest ranks of the civil and military services of the empire, and were thus automatically included as members of the hereditary nobility (since 1856 that status had been conferred with the attainment of the fourth rank). It is diffi­ cult, though, to determine whether they had themselves earned the status of hereditary noble or, if it was clearly inherited from their fa­ thers, how many generations back their noble status reached. For the most part, neither service nor other official records indicate this infor­ mation. What we have to say will then remain to a certain degree in­ conclusive, as much of our speculation on the social origins of these bureaucrats is dependent upon conjecture based upon the type and size of landed wealth held by Council members and their families. The State Council at its inception and through the hrst half of the nineteenth century was just the very kind of aristocratic enclave Soviet historians portray. More than half its members belonged to the titled nobility, and many among them bore the great names of Golitsyn, Dolgorukii, or Vorontsov. Of 55 members sitting on the Council in 1855, 1 came from a clerical family, the remainder from the heredi­ tary nobility. Of these 29 (54%) held titles: 10 princes, 17 counts, and 2 barons. Overall, of the 148 men who held tenure under Nicholas I 62% were titled nobles (though one should point out that of these, 25, or 28%, went to men Nicholas had himself titled; the tsar cannily re­ warded his trusted servants with titles rather than the grants of land and serfs customary with his more generous and less self-confident imperial predecessors).12 By the late nineteenth century we find many fewer titled members in the Council and a far more varied social background among the remainder. Of the 52 Council appointees of Alexander III on whom archival data is available (of a total of 6i), 48 (92%) came from noble and 4 (8%) from nonnoble families. But here simple figures of this kind are not enough, for the status as hereditary nobles of such men as Peretts or Bunge, who were the sons of men who had only them­ selves just earned noble rank, was very different from that of A. S. Ermolov, whose family dated to the sixteenth century, just as the aris­ tocratic heritage of a Russian Prince (kniaz’) Golitsyn or Dolgorukii differed from that of the many holders of the new Germanic (graf, baron) titles freely given out in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen­ turies. In any case, we find significantly fewer titles among Alexan­ der I ll’s 52 appointees (9, or 14%) than among Nicholas I’s 148 (90, *47

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

or 62%). In 1894, at the end of Alexander I ll’s reign, 16 of 70 sitting members (23%) held titles of nobility as opposed to the 29 of 55 (54%) at the end of Nicholas I’s reign.13 With respect to further gradations of status, it is interesting that all four of the self-made nobles ap­ pointed by Alexander III also attained ministerial postions, two of them (Vyshnegradskii and Giubbenet) after their Council appoint­ ments, two ex officio. That the civil service as a whole was undergoing a transformation in its social composition corresponding to what was happening in the Council is indicated by the surprisingly large number of Alexan­ der I ll’s ministers who were self-made nobles and had been appointed to the Council by Alexander II (this would include Sol’skii, Filippov, Ostrovskii, Delianov, and G. E. Pauker) or who, like Bunge and Pobedonostsev, were the children of self-made nobles. Some of these men came from the clergy, like Pobedonostsev or Vyshnegradskii, others from the merchantry, like Ostrovskii. This “mongrelization” of the services hardly met with approval on all sides, and the diary literature of the time is full of disdainful refer­ ences to the raznochintsy as “homines novi,” complete plebeians,” “that gang of Chancery proletarians,” and others equally complimentary.14 But whatever their contemporaries thought of them, their presence in ministerial positions is supporting evidence of the increasing pro­ fessionalization of the civil service, with its trend toward making pro­ motion contingent upon training and expertise, and of the success of the expanding educational network which made such opportunities for advancement available to classes other than the gentry as well. Such changes in the class structure of the bureaucracy were acceler­ ated by the Great Reforms themselves, of course, but an even larger role was played by changes in the bureaucratic apparatus, which had been experiencing since the early nineteenth century steady growth accompanied by an increasing demand for technical training within its ranks. The statistics on the social composition of the Table of Ranks civil service at the end of the nineteenth century illustrate the results of this process. By that time, 28.5 percent of the top four ranks were held by men not of noble origin, 62.1 percent of ranks five to eight, and 77.7 percent of ranks nine to fourteen.15 In summary, by the time of Alexander III, noble status could no longer be considered, as it had been only a generation (1855) earlier, a prerequisite to a successful service career ending in the very highest ranks. And it is significant that even the reactionary Alexander III made no attempt to keep such a prerequisite. 148

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership

The rapidity of this social change is illustrated vividly by an analysis of individual and family (inherited) wealth of Council members, con­ trasting independent holdings in the form of land or other property with service income derived from the state. In the time of Alexan­ der III the majority of Council members had to depend on their state service for their income. In sharp contrast, the Council of Nicholas I was made up overwhelmingly of independently wealthy men who were probably well-born as well. It is difficult to find firm data for either wealth or birth. The wealth of preemancipation Council members was measured by the number of serfs they held; from this one can estimate the size of their landholdings. Postemancipation wealth is expressed directly in terms of land; in both cases, wealth is divided into inherited or acquired. As late as 1853, the Nicholaian Council was composed overwhelm­ ingly of very wealthy men, of whom 92.7 percent were landowners and 70.9 percent were very large landowners with estates of over 1,000 souls. Of the fifty-five members then sitting in the Council, three had no independent wealth, forty had inherited wealth in the form of family estates (rodovye imeniia), eleven had purchased estates, and one had bought a large house in Saint Petersburg. Of that same fifty-five, eleven combined landholding with entrepreneurial activ­ ities, and seventeen owned houses in the most expensive and desir­ able cities of the empire, the two capitals, Petersburg and Moscow.16 Thus almost 73 percent of the Council had substantial inherited wealth in the form of extensive landholdings. One can understand that such men would find most forms of emancipation threatening to their economic interests, and this explains at least partially the objec­ tions they expressed to such proposals. At the same time, the aristo­ cratic, and thus at least partially independent, composition of the State Council helped to establish the role and function of the Council in the first decades of its existence. Because their wealth gave these aristocrats a quasi-independent status and power, the tsars could not easily dismiss the opinions of these elite representatives of society. Further, whatever the limitations of these men as individuals, they had strong, even primary, ties outside the government and outside the capital. Although they formed an elite selected primarily on the accidental basis of birth and wealth, in a paradoxical way they were more representative of society at large and of broader segments and sections of the Russian empire than were the bureaucrats of raznochintsy origin who followed them. Lest this seem simply perverse, consider for a moment the extent to which a Prince Czartoryski could be con149

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

sidered a representative of Polish interests as compared to a bureau­ crat in the Foreign Ministry. What seems undeniable is that these men on the whole represented what little there existed in the empire of a power base apart from the autocracy, and their assent or dissent when confronted with a piece of legislation was in some proportional mea­ sure reflective of the sentiments of that base. Even though the State Council was never able to shed its image as a small aristocratic enclave,17 the situation three decades later was very different. Of the forty-three civilian members of the Council in 1887 twenty-two (51%) had no estates at all (although among these, four had wives who owned estates in their own names, whether as family or purchased holdings is unclear). Although it is always possible that some of these men had inherited and then somehow lost their estates, it seems more likely that most of them came from families in which the father had been as dependent upon state service or other noninherited income as they; certainly they did not constitute an illus­ trious aristocratic group in the manner of their Nicholaian prede­ cessors. Of the remainder, only fourteen (33% of the civilians) had family landholdings; seven had acquired land on their own. Of the twenty-four members who owned land, eight had wives who also owned land, and in seven of these cases this was family land. Although these landholdings are small compared to those of the Nicholaian Council, Council members were considerably more propertied than their colleagues among the highest ranking civil servants (the second and third rank) outside the Council, 70 percent of whom owned no land.18 Of the twenty-four who owned land, sixteen were big landowners, with over 1,000 desiatinas (see Table 10). Of these, the three largest held lands that were largely familial. The biggest was Oberkammerherr Count M. I. Khreptovich, who became a Council member in 1877, after forty-three years in the service. It comes as no surprise that the next two biggest landowners were, of Alexander I l l ’s ap­ pointments, the two most connected with provincial life: Bobrinskii, with 43,000 desiatinas and Galagan, with 30,300 desiatinas. (Galagan, incidentally, was also the most entrepreneurially engaged of the mem­ bers, with four vodka distilleries listed in his name. Only two other members of the Council seem to have owned factories even of this tra­ ditional sort, a circumstance that speaks to the failure of Russia’s ris­ ing industrialists to penetrate in significant numbers into high gov­ ernment positions—though, as we have seen, Vyshnegradskii had close ties to the financial community.)ls 150

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership Table 10.

Landholdings o f 1887 Membership o f State Council in Desiatina“

Holdings

Council members (AO

1 0 1 -5 0 0 5 0 1 -1 ,0 0 0 1,001-5,000 5 ,0 0 1 -1 0 ,0 0 0 10,001-25,000 Over 25,000 Land grants*

4 4 8 2 3 3 2

“One desiatina equals 2.7 acres. ‘Size of land grants is not indicated, but the income derived from D. N. Nabokov’s grants was set at 3,000 rubles per year and that from V. D. Filosofov’s at 1,500; both grants were situated in Poland and were imperial gifts.

By 1887 only two of the highest officials of the empire (ministers, main administrators, president of the Committee of Ministers, pro­ curator of the Holy Synod, chairmen of departments of the Council) belonged to the group of very big landowners, with more than 10,000 desiatinas. These were Tolstoi (who had 10,500 desiatinas, 7,000 of which belonged to his wife) and the wealthy Abaza (who had pur­ chased 16,000 desiatinas). Neither Reutern, nor Bunge, nor Sol’skii, nor Pobedonostsev owned land. Two high-level officials belonged to the middle levels of land ownership, Chairman of the Department of Civil and Religious Affairs N. I. Stoianovskii, who owned but lost 900 desiatinas, and former Minister of Education A. P. Nikolai, who had purchased 800 desiatinas. Even wealth as expressed in ownership of real estate in Petersburg or Moscow was much less in the 1887 Council than in that of 1853. Only one 1887 Council member had bought a stone house in Saint Petersburg, while two others had wives who owned stone houses there. Five additional members owned wooden homes or dachas in Tsarskoe Selo, in Moscow (this was Pobedonostsev; by 1897 he was no longer in possession), or in the provinces. A follow-up look at the wealth of State Council members ten years later in 1897 shows few significant changes. Less than half the mem­ bership had independent wealth, with twenty-seven of forty-eight ci­ vilian members (56%) owning no land. Ownership of expensive town real estate was even less common than a decade earlier: two members 151

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

owned wooden houses in Moscow and one a stone house, held in com­ mon with two brothers, in Petersburg.20 This evidence indicates that by the late nineteenth century, educa­ tion, training, and service experience played a far more significant role in a successful career in the state service than did wealth or ped­ igree. Almost all members of the 1887—1897 Council had been born into the hereditary nobility, but the majority came from service fam­ ilies in which the father or grandfather had first attained hereditary noble status by rising through the Table of Ranks to the requisite de­ gree (which varied over time from rank eight to rank four as succes­ sive tsars increasingly narrowed access to noble status). The prevalence of such a career pattern is emphasized by the al­ ready noted divorce of Council members both from the countryside and from the landed gentry in general. One does not find in Russia a pattern of rising career men acquiring landed property to buttress their status, prestige, and social position by an attempt to ally them­ selves with the gentry. That the highest officials of the empire did not pursue the acquisition of landed property is testimony to the extent to which these men moved in their own world of service, a world that shaped their outlook and mentality and from which they derived not only status and prestige but, as we shall demonstrate, their income as well. In any case, the cultivation of and emphasis on a distinctly rural style of life were not part of the elite socialization process, as they were in England (though this may reflect as much on the different status of the Russian gentry and its European counterparts as it does on the nature of bureaucratic relationships). The split between service and landed property was the culmination of a process that had begun when Peter the Great broke with the prac­ tice of giving land as the automatic reward for state service and reg­ ularized service procedures by instituting the Table of Ranks and with it salaried compensation. By the end of the nineteenth century the bu­ reaucracy and the landed gentry moved for the most part in separate worlds, with the bureaucracy constituting a distinct occupational group separate from any other in society.21 On the basis of this evidence, it is a mistake and not merely an over­ simplification to portray the State Council as a class-based institution in which a bloc of big agrarian landowners lobbied for the interests of their own group. The Council may indeed have been class based, but the class it represented was not the landowners but the bureaucracy. It is thus far-fetched to argue that as members of the hereditary nobility high-level bureaucrats necessarily shared the views and outlook of the 152

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership

gentry and would look sympathetically at its concerns; on the whole, our data show that the majority of Council members had not only spent their whole lives in service (and had often grown up in service families) but also, and significantly, derived both status and income al­ most exclusively from their service. Considering the economic prob­ lems and widespread indebtedness of the landed gentry of this pe­ riod, it seems doubtful that many even of those members who held landed property would have been able to rely on it as their sole or primary means of support. It is time, then, to turn to those salaries and try to determine what level of support they provided. In discussing the income of State Council members, various associ­ ated factors have to be taken into account: the expense of housing, for example, which often induced officials to accept and then cling to positions that came with government housing; the living expenses to support the way of life of the empire’s highest ranking officials; and the inadequacy of pensions, whose rates had been set in 1852 and never revised to reflect rises in the cost of living.22 Even though the tsar would as a rule regularly grant pension rate exceptions on the basis of requests from the Committee of Ministers, the generally low level of pensions made a State Council appointment a highly desirable plum, and more than one high-ranking official dreamed of retiring to the Council simply to be able to keep and even increase his salary. Others, like Minister of Justice M. N. Manasein, were reluctant to leave their ministerial positions without a permanent appointment to the Council for fear of the salary cut such a move would entail. Refer­ ences to high-level statesmen compromising their policy positions for fear of losing their post and with it their salary are common in the diaries of the period. Count Lamzdorf described the problem suc­ cinctly when Alexander III once expressed his astonishment that men would put themselves forward for a Council position when they were obviously no longer able to execute their duties adequately. “You forget,” he told the tsar, “that after fifty years of service most of our honest dignitaries and bureaucrats find themselves in deplorable ma­ terial conditions, and our pension rules don’t give them enough.”23 Another important consideration that made State Council positions highly desirable was the guarantee of financial security for a mem­ ber’s family after his death: Council pension rules gave a widow and any dependent children, regardless of age, about half a member’s combined income.24 Financial dependence on state service had a double effect. In the first place, it increased a member’s commitment and devotion to the 153

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

Council and his loyalty to the tsar who could so easily determine his station in life. At the same time it greatly strengthened the autocrat’s control over the bureaucray and his highest-ranking officials, since he could so easily manipulate financial rewards, particularly for those on the upper levels (even though the tradition of life tenure made it diffi­ cult for him to dismiss a Council member directly and thus bring on his financial ruin).25 During the rule of Alexander III the average salary of a State Council member in the civil service was 15,811 rubles (this increased to 17,730 rubles under Nicholas II in 1903). Actual salaries of indi­ vidual members varied widely from this average, from a low of 10,000 rubles (received by eighteen of forty-three members in 1887 and eight of forty-three in 1903) to a high of 30,000 rubles in 1887 (paid to Minister of Foreign Affairs N. K. Giers, who had no independent means to support the kind of expenditures required by his position and, in addition, had a large family, which put him in constant need). There was no fixed salary scale, and though 10,000 seems to have been a common minimum, each member’s salary was fixed individu­ ally upon appointment, depending on past services and present rank. Former ministers, present ministers, and departmental chairmen were usually in a higher salary bracket than the average high-level civil servant in the Council; Minister of Interior Tolstoi received 25,480 in 1887, coming next after Giers. The average ministerial sal­ ary was 18,000 (seven received this much in 1887— Delianov, Reu­ tern, Sol’skii, Ostrovskii, Bunge, Vyshnegradskii, and Manasein—and ten in 1903). Supplementary income of various kinds (similar to the “revolutionary ration" or “certificates” of later times) could add as much as 50 percent to a member’s actual income. In 1887 Actual Privy Councillor K. K. Grot’s salary, for example, was 10,000 rubles, but he received an additional 7,000 rubles in supplementary income. Sup­ plements, like basic salaries, varied widely. Foreign Minister Giers’s supplement came to 5,000 rubles, Tolstoi’s to 1,029. Members’ in­ comes could also be improved by serving on commissions, participat­ ing in conferences, receiving awards, and otherwise taking part in a variety of functions. Regular supplementary incomes of various sorts (pensions attached to orders, arendy, and assorted pribavochnye and dobavochnye zarabotki) could also be increased by arrangement every few years depending on merit and special financial need. By these means Actual Privy Councillor E. V. Frishch’s combined income of 19,500 rubles in 1893 had increased to 29,700 by 1907 (a 52% rise

154

A S ocial P rofile of the M embership

compared to an average of approximately 12% between 1887 and 1903).26 The average State Council salary of 15,811 rubles reflects the se­ niority and high status of Council members. At the end of the nine­ teenth century, of a total of 435,818 civil servants in the empire, only 91,204 received more than 1,000 rubles, only 2,000 between 5,000 and 10,000 rubles, 282 between 10,000 and 20,000 rubles, 40 between 20.000 and 50,000 rubles, and 10 more than 50,000 rubles per year. At about this same time 2,900 lawyers averaged between 2,000 and 5.000 rubles, 770 between 5,000 and 10,000 rubles, 94 between 10.000 and 20,000 rubles, and only 4 between 20,000 and 50,000 ru­ bles.27 We can see, then, that the financial rewards of state service com­ pared favorably to those of what was probably the most closely equiv­ alent occupation outside the government, though a civil service career would admittedly entail a slower and more tortuous rise through the ranks, with generally fiercer competition for the restricted number of higher positions. In summary, an analysis of the social characteristics of State Council members shows that by the end of the nineteenth century education and training had become the chief factors in the achievement of rank and subsequent promotion to the Council. The move toward a profes­ sionally oriented and expertly trained high-level civil service, as re­ flected in Council composition toward the end of the century, was ac­ companied by a reduction in the representativeness of the institution overall. Insofar as one can judge from Council membership, the rise of a career bureaucracy in Russia entailed also the development of an almost hereditary class of bureaucrats in which the tradition of state service was passed on from father to son. (It should be pointed out that instead of trying to determine the social origins of those already in the service, approaching from the opposite direction—inquiring what occupations were chosen by the children of successive genera­ tions of service bureaucrats—might show a very different pattern. It seems far less likely, for instance, that a father with five sons would find all of them in the civil service than that a given civil servant would have a father and even grandfather who had also been a civil servant. For our purposes, though, it is telling that so many late-century Coun­ cil members came from service families.) Alexander’s fear of the Council as an independent body that lim­ ited his exercise of power has been frequently stressed. Yet the picture we have arrived at of the social position of State Council members

l 55

A ttempts to R emake the C ouncil

suggests that the tsar had at this time a relatively pliable instrument with a considerable vested interest in avoiding abrupt or radical change in the institutional framework of the empire, an instrument that would not have been likely to indulge in outright defiance of his will.

PART

IV T he C ounter-R eforms

CHAPTER

9

revious chapters of this work have been concerned with particu­ lar features of the individuals and institutions at the apex of the governmental structure. A broad combination of changes in the un­ derlying structure of society, together with changes in the bureau­ cracy that both served and itself constituted the government, had led to serious friction between the autocrat and his servitors. The aspect of the friction that has most concerned us is the developing indepen­ dence of particular levels of the bureaucracy that resulted from in­ creasing professionalization. In a sense, the situation was the obverse of a parallel development in the industrial world, for just at the time that the notion (and the possibility of technical realization) of the in­ terchangeability of parts was starting to make possible the devel­ opment of mass production, the increased technical specialization of elements of the government structure was helping to make those ele­ ments irreplaceable and thus at least potentially independent. This el­ ement of irreplaceability is most clearly seen in Alexander’s inability to change significantly the personnel of the State Council—or, for that matter, of specialized ministries such as Finance or Justice. Chap­ ters 9—11 examine how this newly professionalized system functioned in the actual working out of three representative legislative efforts of Alexander I ll’s reign. Each of these represented a major policy objec­ tive of the counter-reformers, each had the support of the tsar and the opposition of significant portions of the bureaucracy, and each re­ sulted in a vastly different outcome. The array and interplay of forces determining the fate of these legislative efforts tell us a good deal about the constitution of the government at this time and its ability or inability to govern. Upon his accession, one of Alexander I ll’s primary goals was the abrogation of the Judicial Statute of 1864, with its introduction of the

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principles of separation of powers, permanent tenure of judges, trial by jury, and an organized self-governing bar. In his moves in this di­ rection, Alexander could count upon the support of many in the tra­ ditionalist group of higher bureaucrats and their journalistic allies, and of course on Tolstoi and his Interior Ministry as well. In Interior especially, the independent judiciary was seen as a prime obstacle to the imposition of order.1 To deal with such problems, the administration had already devel­ oped, during the reign of Alexanderll, ways of circumventing the ju­ dicial system: formal attempts had been made to remold the system of justice, and such extralegal procedures as declaring martial law, re­ moving juries from political cases, and attempting to put outside political pressure on judges had been brought into play. Under Alex­ ander III this process of underminingjudicial authority and preroga­ tives was further accelerated, but it was still considered insufficient: the tsar wanted a complete revamping of the very structure of the system. In opposition to such plans there stood the entire legal apparatus, governmental and civilian, that had grown up in the decades prior to Alexander’s accession. Also in opposition was the large body of pub­ lic opinion, cutting across liberal and conservative viewpoints, that viewed the existence of an independent judiciary as the very first re­ quirement for the development of a legal order of due process and regular procedure sufficient to protect the rights of individuals and of society as a whole. Crucial in all this was the position of the Ministry of Justice and its head, Dmitrii Nabokov, since any formal proposal for legislative change would come through this ministry. During the reign of Alex­ ander II, starting before and accelerating after the promulgation of the Judicial Statute of 1864 and its successor legislation, an esprit de corps and sense of service solidarity had developed in the new legal bureaucracy, within both the ministry and the newly independent court system, that imbued legal personnel everywhere with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Nabokov, whom Alexander retained as minister of justice (1878-1885) from his father’s reign, was himself part of this fraternity and jealously guarded the esprit at his ministry. As German ambassador von Schweinitz, in an appraisal of the state of Russia in 1883, reported to the German Foreign Office, “Nabo­ kov firmly upholds formal legality and the philanthropy of modern justice.”2 But he did so under great, and increasing, pressure. Ever since 160

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1864, Pobedonostsev had freely declared his antagonism to every as­ pect of the judicial reforms, and he now began to play a central role in the shaping of government judicial policy. Since 1882, with the tsar’s encouragement, he had been urging Nabokov to draft changes in the statutes and submit them for deliberation to the Council.3 Nabokov resisted, choosing instead to bide his time, but in 1884 he finally intro­ duced a project to strengthen the disciplinary powers of the minister of justice over judges and other law officers. This change would limit, but not abolish, the permanent tenure of judges. In his presentation to the State Council, Nabokov pointed out that under current statutes, judges were subject only to a warning to refrain from future negli­ gence after having been found guilty of “disciplinable actions” (postupki). The new statute would allow for the dismissal or transfer of such judges, after a trial in a specially constituted court to consist of thirteen senators from the Senate’s First and Appeal departments.4 Nabokov’s move at this time was dictated, as his friend Koni put it, by “political wisdom.” It was his intention “to meet the danger headon, to determine firmly and conscientiously what can be conceded, and then to say: ‘Not one step farther!”’5 In putting disciplinary mea­ sures under the jurisdiction of the Senate, Nabokov was saying “Not one step farther”: this step would ensure that administrative elements would not be directly involved in disciplinary actions over judges, even though the tsar would appoint the senators to the special court. The debates on Nabokov’s project took place in an atmosphere of pressure from all sides. Alexander III made known the direction in which he desired debate to be channeled, and Katkov brought his in­ fluence to bear on ministers, the Council, and the tsar in an attempt to ensure that they would stand firm. In this he could count on the active cooperation of Pobedonostsev and the minister of state domains. This was M. N. Ostrovskii, brother to the dramatist and an ambitious man who saw in this project the opportunity to move toward the portfolio at interior, which he greatly coveted (but never secured). Both Pobe­ donostsev and Ostrovskii, in violation of Council procedure, reported directly to the tsar on the course of Council debates, in the hope of securing Alexander’s indirect aid in their common effort. Debate was held in the combined Departments of Law and Civil and Religious Affairs, under the chairmanship of A. P. Nikolai, on May 12 and 14, 1884. The inconclusive result could be considered a victory for the jurists. According to the “project journal” that re­ corded the course of the debate, it was the opinion of the combined departments that Nabokov’s proposal encroached upon the perma161

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nent tenure of judges, that this principle had not been violated in the past nineteen years, and that it remained “one of the most important conditions for good legal procedure and . . . the correct administra­ tion of justice.” In the opinion of the departments, Nabokov’s proposal was likely to have a negative effect on the quality of judicial personnel. Permanent tenure afforded the security and independence necessary for the proper execution of judicial duties; Nabokov’s proposal encroached on such independence without demonstrating the need for change. In the interest of securing Nabokov’s ends, the departments said, “one hardly need deprive the whole judicial estate of one of the most important advantages conferred on it, permanent tenure by admin­ istrative order.”6 In even accepting Nabokov’s proposal for debate, the departments had engaged in a compromise of sorts, since though they had no right to refuse consideration of a project, they were empowered to return a project for resubmission when it was felt not to be well worked out. For this there were many precedents, and the tactic was commonly used simply to let a project die.7 In this case, the members of the de­ partments must have realized that such action would have incurred severe imperial displeasure, as Alexander’s views on the matter were widely known. At the same time, the departments had stood firm on the principle, turning weaknesses in Nabokov’s presentation to their favor. Nabokov had allowed such weaknesses, failing to assemble sufficient proof to show that a change in the principle of life tenure was needed, because he himself was not convinced of the merits of his proposal.8 As Polovtsov noted in his diary, Nabokov’s proposal amounted to no more than his attempt to “answer Katkov’s order to destroy the tenure of judges.” The conciliatory position Nabokov took during the two sessions in the combined departments bears out this assessment; as Polovtsov put it, “Nabokov is denied a great deal, and a great deal he denies himself in advance.”9 The main concession Nabokov made, and it was a significant one, was to allow the departments to rewrite his proposal to narrow the conditions under which cases could be brought to his new court; while in the original proposal a judge who was only charged with “a crime or some other action” could be brought before the court, in the re­ vised text the judge first had to be convicted. In addition, a provision was added to ensure that only cases of gross and repeated negligence of duties would come under review. These conditions ensured that 162

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the minister of justice’s power to refer cases was strictly circumscribed and much more limited than it would have been under Nabokov’s original proposal. In addition, the court’s name was changed from “highest disciplinary court” to “highest disciplinary board” in an at­ tempt to play down the importance of that body.10 In all, the depart­ ments’ recommendations made certain that the impact of the new leg­ islation would be minimal and that it would not affect negatively the judges’ feelings of independence and security, which were thought to be essential to the execution of judicial duties. Just what happened at this stage in the deliberations, after the com­ bined departments had submitted their reaction to Nabokov’s project, is unclear. Polovtsov, for one, is uncharacteristically reticent about the matter in his diary, and other sources offer little additional material. It can be conjectured, though, that Alexander’s displeasure at the con­ tents of the report was responsible for the belated addition of the strange and unusual qualifier “project” to the journal that resulted from these first two days of debate. And it was probably also Alex­ ander who suggested that the matter not rest there, but be debated further; Zaionchkovskii is of the opinion that he was influenced in this course by Katkov or Pobedonostsev." The second debate took place the following year, and again over the course of two sessions. A second journal was issued at this time, and in contrast to the project journal was signed by the members of the departments. This second journal contains the record of depart­ mental deliberations for both the original set of two sessions and the second set that took place in March and April of 1885; it superseded the project journal, from which it diverges sharply in both tone and substance. Most notably, the departments’ statement of principle concerning the inviolability of the judicial statutes was missing completely. Insofar as the project itself was concerned, the departments reversed their previous decision on the jurisdiction of the disciplinary board and sig­ nificantly widened the category of misdemeanors that would fall within its purview. There is no substantive evidence to explain why the departments reversed themselves in this way; the journal only notes that such a widening of the category of misdemeanors was needed because otherwise it would be too difficult to remove “unwor­ thy and undignified judges who do not deserve their calling.” Such unworthiness was now defined in rather loose language, and the disci­ plinary board was empowered to review the cases of judges who had shown repeated negligence in their duties even if these actions had 163

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not led to prosecution. Further, a judge was to be subject to review if he had engaged in “actions” unconnected with his service but that were in the public view and violated “the honorable calling” of a judge. He would also be subject to review if there existed reason to doubt his ability to execute his duties in the future in a “quiet and un­ prejudiced” manner, or if he declined a transfer to a post of equal sta­ tus in another locality.12 There can be little question that this second set of events was not even a standoff, but an actual defeat for the jurists. Having tasted a minor victory, the counter-reformers now thirsted for a major one, particularly as it seemed within their grasp. Nabokov’s project in its new form was to be referred to the General Assembly of the State Council on May 7, 1885. Consideration here would normally be a matter of routine, since in the absence of conflicting minority and ma­ jority reports it was the practice of the General Assembly simply to confirm the decisions agreed upon in the departments. This time, though, the counter-reformers felt that they were in the ascendant, and, besides, they had the tsar with them. They let it be known that they were acting with the support of Alexander III and attempted to maneuver a split in the General Assembly that would enable them to rewrite Nabokov’s proposal in still more extreme fashion. When Polovtsov arrived at the Council shortly before the opening of debate, he found that Ostrovskii, who had evidently been chosen to act as delegate of the counter-reformers, intended to make a state­ ment on Nabokov’s project, proposing two major changes: first, that the disciplinary board should have the right to consider the dismissal of judges for “misdemeanors offensive to morality, even if these were not subject to a penalty prescribed by the criminal law,” and, second, that the board should be composed not of senators, but of “persons completely outside of the judicial department.” 1* Upon hearing of Ostrovskii’s plan, Polovtsov arranged for an explanatory meeting to include Ostrovskii, Nabokov, and Grand Duke Mikhail, for whom a sudden surprise announcement of this sort made in the Council’s As­ sembly would have been a serious embarrassment. The scene that fol­ lowed in the grand duke’s study instantly became a topic of conversa­ tion in scandal-loving Petersburg. Nabokov categorically refused to accept Ostrovskii’s proposal. It was, he said, insulting to the Senate and to the whole judicial apparatus. “All of this,” he exclaimed at one point, “comes straight from the editorial offices of the Moscow News, which is throwing mud at the judicial section and at the State Council as well.” 164

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“You insult me,” Ostrovskii answered. “I am sure that you enlisted the support of the tsar ahead of time,” broke in the grand duke at this point. At this, according to Polovtsov, the quarrel became still more heated, with Ostrovskii finally charging that the grand duke was “insulting the tsar by striving to limit his right to select the personnel for this board.” 14 Though Polovtsov’s attempt at a reconciliation failed, the atmo­ sphere at the ensuing debate in the Assembly was less explosive than it might otherwise have been. And although Ostrovskii gained Pobedonostsev’s support for his proposed emendation of the project, the As­ sembly as a whole upheld the opinions of the departments. In view of this, Pobedonostsev and Ostrovskii acknowledged the futility of their opposition, and on May 20, 1885, Alexander III confirmed the rec­ ommendation of the Assembly. As it happened, the day after the first debate on the project in the Assembly, Grand Duke Mikhail was told that Katkov and Alexander had, indeed, been involved in Ostrovskii’s failed attempt to rewrite the project. According to Count Peter Shuvalov, Katkov had come to see him the day before the debate was to begin in the Assembly and told him that upon reading the journal of the departments he found that “Nabokov’s proposals not only did not improve matters, but actu­ ally made them worse, and therefore he went to Gatchina and saw the tsar, who, sharing his view, supposedly empowered him to meet with Ostrovskii and Pobedonostsev, so that they could arouse opposi­ tion.” 15 Later, in a conversation with Grand Duke Mikhail the tsar claimed that he had not seen Katkov, but he went on to warn the grand duke that matters of this type were all “constitutional attempts and that the judicial statutes had to be redone.” As much as a year later, Alexander returned to the subject and informed the grand duke that Nabokov had conceded so much because he and other min­ isters had been scared by Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich(!).16 This kind of contradictory testimony and evidence gives some in­ dication of the complexity and touchiness of the situation. In the­ ory the tsar could get what he wanted, and exactly what he wanted, through a variety of means. He could, for instance, bypass the State Council and other supreme organs entirely and simply issue a ukaz abrogating life tenure for judges or, as he did with the emergency measures enacted to protect state security and public order in the first period of his reign, he could process the legislation through the Com­ mittee of Ministers. Failing this, he could have pushed Ostrovskii and Pobedonostsev to issue a minority report out of the Assembly and 165

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confirmed that, or he could simply have rewritten the Assembly’s rec­ ommendation on his own so that it met his exact specifications, and confirmed that. There existed precedents for all of these courses, and all of them were resorted to on one occasion or another during Alex­ ander I ll’s own reign. But in this case he took none of these possible courses, and confirmed instead a recommendation that gave him a good deal less than he wanted—and we shall soon see just the extent of his dissatisfaction. It is interesting to speculate on why the tsar felt constrained to act as he did. For Alexander to have issued a ukaz abrogating life tenure would have been seen throughout the empire and beyond as a whole­ sale violation of all principles of legal procedure. There would have been no mutiny and probably not even any resignations, but there would have been widespread muttering and rumblings of discontent, perhaps even the precipitation of a new crisis of autocracy. Similarly, the widespread feeling of dissatisfaction that had resulted from the enactment of the emergency legislation, and the associated consensus that processing it through the Committee of Ministers was an extralegal step were something that Alexander at this time preferred to avoid. And the same held true in lesser measure for the alternatives of confirming a minority report of the Council or of writing his own. Taking either step would be using very heavy ammunition, for by this time there existed a widespread agreement that even the confirma­ tion of minority opinions constituted a violation of regular proce­ dure. Alexander would use that weapon on many occasions, but this was not to be one of them. He had not gotten everything he wanted, but he had gotten something and would try for more. Perhaps be­ cause he was dealing with the legal system, perhaps because of other reasons entirely, in this matter at least Alexander chose to observe all the principles and procedures of formal legality. That he did so de­ spite his considerable dissatisfaction with the fruits of such a course is itself an indication that he could do little else. No matter how arbi­ trarily the tsar was willing to act on occasion, by this time there was general agreement in the empire that in matters of this gravity, involv­ ing the basic laws of the state, the sanction of regular legislative pro­ cessing through the State Council was needed. The law of May 20, 1885, imposed a limitation on the principle of permanent tenure of judges, but did not eliminate it. The right of censure was transferred from the independent appeals departments of the Senate to a board of legal experts, but this did nothing to add to the direct power of the tsar or the administration, since neither could 166

Law

interfere directly in the adjudication of such cases. The change could, therefore, be seen as a reaffirmation of the principle of separation of powers set out in 1864. Although the tsar could appoint and dismiss the members of the review board, his choice of personnel was limited to senators from the Appeal and First departments—in effect, to ju­ rists. And as it turned out, Nabokov had conceded very little indeed, since the board removed in the end only two judges during the nine remaining years of Alexander’s rule.17 Because of Nabokov’s resistance to changes in the independence of the judiciary Pobedonostsev now found little difficulty in persuading the tsar to get rid of him. The tsar sent Nabokov a note in 1885 re­ questing his resignation specifically because of his slowness in propos­ ing changes in the judicial statutes.18 Nabokov had no recourse but to comply. He did not do so willingly and wrote several angry letters to Pobedonostsev accusing him of being responsible for his dismissal.19 Zaionchkovskii has pointed out that one reason Nabokov may not have gone ahead with the proposals the tsar wanted is that he naively thought that Alexander III shared his concern for the inviolability of the judicial statutes, deriving this impression from long talks with the tsar on this topic.20 Alexander was not above a good deal of hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness on the topic of the statutes when discussing them officially and on the record.21 It is also not impossible, though, that Nabokov consciously chose to take the tsar’s words at their face value just because this supported the views of his ministry. Whatever the case, Nabokov was soon out and replaced by Pobedonostsev’s candidate, Manasein, who had just attracted his patron’s -at­ tention by a rigorous review of policy in the Baltic provinces. In spite of his close association with Pobedonostsev, Manasein was a man of liberal conservative views who did not share Pobedonostsev’s position on many issues and could act quite independently of him on occasion; Meshcherskii, for one, distrusted him as “a political liberal of long standing” and warned Alexander that his appointment would result injudicial attacks upon the status of the nobility.22 Manasein had received his legal training at the School of Jurispru­ dence, and as a practicing jurist he respected the principle of separa­ tion of powers enshrined in the 1864 statutes. Still, he proved more compliant than Nabokov, and under the direct prodding of Pobedo­ nostsev he introduced into the Council a series of restrictive measures against the judiciary. Debate on these was often heated and even, when Foreign Minister Giers objected to a proposal to close courts to the public on grounds of “protecting the dignity of state power,” 167

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raised questions of Russia’s standing in the community of civilized na­ tions. Opinions in the Council at this point were divided, with a mi­ nority agreeing to the project as it had been presented by Manasein. Giers stressed that conventions with foreign powers on the extradi­ tion of criminals were concluded on the understanding that trials would be open, and that such conventions were now endangered. He concluded by saying that this law as it now stood could lead to the can­ cellation of a number of treaties. Alexander was incensed by the Giers statement, since it intruded on the domain of foreign policy, which the autocrat reserved exclusively for himself, and he forbade any fur­ ther discussion of the matter, confirming the minority opinion as it had been written up before Giers had spoken.23 Giers was not alone, though, and his words reveal the views held by a considerable portion of the public, including even some high in the administration, on any tampering with the judicial reforms. An inde­ pendent judiciary was regarded as an essential component of a mod­ ern and civilized state both by educated segments of Russian society and by the Western European governments from whom Russia was trying to secure loans to finance her program of modernization and industrialization. Within the State Council itself, a coalition of re­ formers and traditionalists cutting across many of the usual ideologi­ cal divisions was ready to resist attempts to subvert judicial indepen­ dence. As Witte declared without equivocation, “in a cultured state it is impossible, really, to mix administrative and judicial powers; the ju­ diciary should be independent.’’24 Such growing respect for the prin­ ciples of the law shows the extent to which a legal consciousness had penetrated into the bureaucracy at large since the 1860s; henceforth in imperial Russia the principle of legality was to be regarded as a basic and vital element of the functioning of the state. In the end Manasein himself proved too much a part of this same tradition for his sponsor’s taste. A. D. Pazukhin, Tolstoi’s man at the chancery of the Ministry of Interior, complained to Katkov that it was useless to deal with Manasein because all he would do was try to “prove that no reforms in the judicial institutions are necessary except for completely empty and useless changes.”25 Like Nabokov before him, Manasein acted by taking no action at all (which Koni had de­ scribed by the proverb, “Zeit gewonnen, alles gewonnen”).26 In 1889 Manasein stubbornly resisted by every circumvention at his disposal * the tsar’s order to abolish the justices of the peace. This provoked the tsar’s wrath and led to the expectation that Manasein, whose position in the government was deteriorating almost day by day, would resign. 168

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But still he held on. According to Polovtsov the reason for his pro­ tracted tenure was simply that he needed the ministerial income to support his domestic establishment and he was afraid that the dis­ favor shown him was an indication he would not be granted the cus­ tomary promotion into the State Council.27 In the end, of course, he did resign, but not until 1894. Manasein got his promotion into the State Council and the tsar got a new and more amenable minister of justice in N. N. Murav’ov, a man who was willing to do almost any­ thing in the interests of advancing his career. It was under Murav’ov that the most serious of the attacks on the judiciary was initiated. In a report confirmed by the tsar on April 9, 1894, Murav’ov asked for the appointment of a commission that would have as its express task the reform of the Judicial Statute of 1864. Murav’ov proposed to abrogate the independence of the judiciary and end the permanent tenure of judges by establishing the basic principle that all judicial institutions were state institutions and sub­ ject to governmental direction; this being the case, the government must have the power to appoint and remove judicial personnel and “direct the activities of that personnel according to the interests of the entire state.”28 Murav’ov’s plans were cut short by Alexander’s death in October of 1894, but one can speculate that little would have come of them anyway.29 For one thing, Murav’ov himself apparently had second thoughts about his position. In 1897 in Siberia he gave a speech ex­ tolling the virtues of the Judicial Statute of 1864 and expressing his regrets at the changes made in them. The judicial statutes, he said, “had given to Russia the product of everything that in the course of whole centuries mankind had been, able to conceive in the realm of justice.”30 Perhaps Katkov was right when he told Pobedonostsev that legal counter-reform could be carried out only under a minister of justice who had no prior connection with the legal estate, for men who came from that milieu could not break away from it even when they wished to.31 Even this understates the case, though, for it was more than Mura­ v’ov’s scruples, left over from his own years of legal training, that acted as a restraint upon him in his approach to undoing the statutes of 1864. The fact was that a minister of justice could not singlehandedly undertake a reform such as he proposed, not even with the full authorization and support of the tsar: the actual formulation of any such reform depended on subordinate personnel in the ministry, and these firmly resisted major changes in the law. Thus it seems that 169

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even though theoretically the resistance Alexander encountered from high in his own staff to major reform of the judiciary could possibly have been overcome by a serious shake-up of personnel in the admin­ istration, such a shake-up would have had to reach impossibly deep. On this matter, at least, Alexander was the captive of the bureaucracy upon which he had to depend for any kind of effective executive ac­ tion and, quite simply, there were some actions government servants would make every effort not to execute. By the latter third of the nineteenth century, these included major attempts to abrogate the in­ dependence of the judiciary. Thus in spite of limited successes, the counter-reformers proved unable to push through a major program against the judiciary. The professionalization of the Russian bureau­ cracy had the result in practice that Alexander’s ministers and other high civil servants were effectively able to modify or even block en­ tirely this aspect of the plans for counter-reform.

CHAPTER

10 And Order

s we have seen, one reason the Judicial Statute of 1864 remained .relatively intact is that there existed in many parts of the admin­ istration a widespread belief that an independent judicial branch sep arate from the administration was one of the requisites of a modern state. And it is possible that Alexander III himself had doubts about the question. Certainly, statements like the one the tsar made to Murav’ov, his last minister of justice, seem to indicate not just hypocrisy, but hesitation: when Murav’ov asked on what basis the emperor desired him to conduct the reform of the judiciary, Alexander replied, “on the inviolability of the judicial statutes.” And of course, as we have seen, administrative means existed for circumventing the problems and embarrassments an independent judiciary sometimes caused the government, and this also may have played its role in the maneuver­ ing around the judicial counter-reforms. About other matters the tsar had greater immediate fears and correspondingly little hesitation to take sharp and abrupt action on his own, particularly when the con­ cerned ministry worked with rather than against him. If Nabokov and Manasein had to be pushed to put forth their measures against the judiciary, such was hardly the case with Tolstoi and his associates at Interior. If Justice had as part of its constituency, so to speak, the judi­ ciary and the whole legal profession, Interior’s constituency was not the peasantry or even the population at large among whom it was to preserve order, but rather its own representatives in the population, the preservers of that order. The point of view of the Ministry of Inte­ rior was thus significantly different from that of Justice. The Emancipation Statute and its successor statutes dealing with peasant affairs had ended gentry policing of the peasantry. What was left in the countryside in the wake of the Great Reforms were two ju­ risdictions: that of the volost administration, which dealt with the

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peasantry exclusively, and that of the zemstvo, which dealt with all classes of the population. According to the terms of the Emancipation Statute the peasantry was organized into communes (selskie obshchestva) and volosts (the territorial units constituting each district) with an administration elected and run by the peasantry itself. Except for se­ rious crimes, the peasantry was left largely under customary law. It was set apart from other classes of the population through the preser­ vation of the prereform tradition of joint responsibility for the pay­ ment of direct taxes as well as through the postreform burden of debt payments to the state for land allotments. This joint tax liability, par­ ticularly when coupled with the controls exercised by the passport sys­ tem, made peasant mobility extremely difficult. To further complicate matters, the existence of a complex code of government regulations with respect to the “moral condition” of the villages gave the police, to whom enforcement was entrusted, the opportunity to intrude almost at will in almost all matters of peasant life. At the same time, it is nec­ essary to emphasize that the police presence in rural areas was so rare and scattered that such intrusions were more likely to be charac­ terized by their arbitrariness than by their frequency—and this, from the point of view of the administration, was precisely one of the prob­ lems: how to extend that presence in breadth and depth. In contrast to the volost administration, the zemstvo was an autono­ mous local organ that dealt with the three classes of peasantry, towns­ folk, and gentry together. Each class elected, at separate meetings, deputies to zemstvo assemblies at the district (uezd) level. Representa­ tion was allotted on a basis proportional to property holdings (with some provision for differences between rural and urban holdings), and elections were indirect. There was little pretense at democratic procedure, and the process was purposely'slanted to favor the gentry, but the resulting body, the zemstvo, did have some input from all classes, and its jurisdiction, in turn, extended to all inhabitants of the district and province (guberniia) through a system of superordinated zemstvo bodies. The district zemstvo assembly, whose members served for a term of three years, appointed an executive board and elected deputies from its midst to serve in the provincial zemstvo as­ sembly, which in turn appointed its own executive board. All admin­ istrative duties were delegated to the boards, which served continu­ ously throughout the year and employed a professional staff, while the assemblies themselves met only once a year to consider matters of budget and general policy. In addition, the district zemstvo assemblies elected justices of the peace (mirovye sudy) who handled certain specific 172

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criminal and civil cases and to whom the peasantry could make appeal in certain categories of cases.1The zemstvos, while they are sometimes referred to as organs of local self-government, were really more selfhelp institutions created to alleviate some of the pressing needs of rural Russia through local initiative. Their concerns were not with matters of law and organization, but rather with a variety of local needs including education, medicine, health, road construction and maintenance, fire prevention and insurance, veterinary service, and storage of food for emergencies; in other societies many of these mat­ ters were handled by private corporate bodies or voluntary coopera­ tive associations. If this description sounds complicated, it is in fact a tremendous oversimplification of a situation that, in Yaney’s words was, “from an administrator’s point of view . . . chaos.”2 To deal with these complex­ ities and try to bring some order to matters of local organization and the status of estates (sosloviia), a commission dealing with these and other concerns of rural life was established in 1880. In its original form, the commission consisted of a group of high officials and three senators (Polovtsov, I. M. Shamshin, and S. A. Mordvinov) who had been charged by the then Minister of Interior Loris-Melikov with the inspection of rural conditions in several provinces. In 1881 the commission appointed from its midst a subcommittee headed by M. N. Kakhanov, assistant minister under Loris-Melikov (and appointed to the State Council in 1881), to work out a program for reform of deficiencies in rural organization. The subcommission soon took over the main work of the committee and was dubbed with the name of its chairman. Its plan for rural reorganization was com­ pleted in 1884, by which time Tolstoi was minister of interior. The proposals of the Kakhanov Commission were designed to pro­ mote rural welfare by simplifying and rationalizing some of the ele­ ments of the existing complex scheme of organization. The primary aim was to extend self-government by integrating the peasantry with other classes of the population and thus removing much of the poten­ tial for abuse in conflicts between state authority and local organs. The recommendations of the Kakhanov Commission were in many ways consonant with a broad consensus on social attitudes widespread among reformist officials, specifically with their preference for the principle of “omniclassness” or “classlessness” (bessoslovnost’) in distinc­ tion to the “estatism” (soslovnost’) generally championed by traditionalists. Generally speaking, the reformers favored trying to foster a more diverse and open society by increasing opportunities for indepen173

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dent activity at the local level through the preservation and further strengthening of the autonomous bodies of zemstvos and municipal councils. This was to be done by broadening the elective principle and extending the jurisdiction of local organs to remove the possibility of conflicts with government agencies in areas where the demarcation of state and public functions was still unclear. This was particularly a problem with regard to police interference in zemstvo affairs and its refusal to carry out zemstvo orders, two frequent sources of major conflicts of authority.3 At the local level itself, the reformists tended toward a position in conflict with the centralizing activities of the monolithic state both in practice and in principle; they saw the status of the peasantry as one of the matters of unfinished business left over from the emancipation; the peasantry had been set apart from the rest of the nation with laws and institutions of its own. Since the Kakhanov Commission based its recommendations on the principle of classlessness and wished to extend self-government in rural Russia, traditionalists could claim that its thrust was liberal. A closer examination reveals that these liberals were decidedly conser­ vative in cast, since at the base of their proposals lay nothing more radical than the preservation of gentry domination of the countryside for the foreseeable future. The main new functionary proposed in the plan, the volostel, was supposed to be a local citizen with a minimum of a high school educa­ tion. This requirement alone would by itself have effectively limited the post to the gentry and, indeed, in all but exceptional circum­ stances, to only a few of its members. Furthermore, since the volostel was to be elected by the zemstvo, whose electoral system was itself slanted in favor of the gentry, it is unlikely that the new institution would have been populated by anyone the gentry found unaccepta­ ble. Thus even though the argument could be made that members of the gentry were in fact those most likely to be qualified by other con­ siderations to occupy the new post, the gentry bias of the Kakhanov report made it a backward-looking document full of nostalgia for pre­ reform Russia. Predictably, this is not the manner in which it was seen by Tolstoi, who had his own still inchoate plans for rural reorganization. Tolstoi proceeded to pack the subcommittee with “informed men” who could be counted upon to dispute its work. In response to their criticism, the Commission made some changes and emendations, all of them to lit­ tle effect. In 1885 the Commission was dissolved, and Tolstoi, in re­ porting on its recommendations to the tsar, singled out those ele*74

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ments of the proposals that dealt with the extension of local autonomy and self-government, labeling them as dangerous moves toward liber­ alism of the constitutional and antiautocratic variety. The Ministry of Interior thereupon assumed full responsibility for the further work­ ing out of legislation dealing with matters of local government. The resulting proposals, which quickly earned for themselves the name not of reforms, but of counter-reforms, included the land captain (zemskii nachal’nik) project of 1889 and the zemstvo and municipal projects of 1890 and 1892. Future debate on these issues and on a wide range of legislative proposals dealing with matters of local gov­ ernment would find the former kakhanovtsy on the State Council— Kakhanov himself, Liuboshchinskii, Kovalevskii, Frishch, and State Secretary Polovtsov—arrayed in opposition to the proposals from the Ministry of the Interior.4 Tolstoi gave over his plans for rural reorganization to an obscure district marshal of nobility from the Simbirsk province, A. D. Pazukhin, who took as his starting point the notion that at the root of all problems of rural administrations “lies the principle of the lev­ eling or the so-called merging of estates [sosloviia] not only with re­ gard to personal (civil) rights, but also with respect to all service (po­ litical) rights.”5 This attitude, combined with Tolstoi’s own beliefs in the desirability of uniting administrative and judicial functions under one authority, made a direct confrontation with the reformers unavoidable. Pazukhin began work on the reform of local government in 1885, the year the Kakhanov Commission ceased functioning. He finished his work in March of 1886, whereupon it was submitted to the State Council for consideration. The result was one of the most complex legislative debates of the era of Alexander III, with one mix-up and intrigue following another in quick succession and a denouement that not even Tolstoi, its official sponsor, was aware of until the final moment. Part of the reason for confusion lay with the manner of composi­ tion: Tolstoi gave the project over to Pazukhin to work out almost en­ tirely on his own. According to Feoktistov, Pazukhin “consulted liter­ ally with no one, nor did he initiate anyone into his secret. Even Count Tolstoi was no exception. Naturally Pazukhin talked with him, checked his ideas with him, but still in March when I told Tolstoi that the edi­ tor of the Saint Petersburg News wanted to familiarize himself with the fundamental principles of the reform, I received the reply, ‘I myself have not mastered this matter in any real fashion. Pazukhin didn’t l 75

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give me anything on paper.”’6 Thus, up until the very last minute be­ fore submission to the Council, Tolstoi himself seems to have been un­ familiar with the contents of his own ministry’s major proposal of the counter-reform period. Since Tolstoi during this three-year period was dying of a debilitating disease—and his health became one of the points at issue on more than one occasion—his neglect is understand­ able, though his lack of familiarity with the project further compli­ cated an issue in no need of further complication.7 Whatever Tolstoi’s ignorance of the details of his project, he seems to have had little doubt that it would run into opposition in its broad outlines, for he put off consideration on its related project, the pro­ posal for zemstvo reform, to the indefinite future, and in the end it came to the Council only after his death in 1889. He apparently came to this decision after submitting the two projects for a preliminary re­ view by three ministers, Manasein, Ostrovskii, and Pobedonostsev, be­ fore passing the project on to the tsar to secure his approval for sub­ mission. Before this interministerial conference, Tolstoi seems to have thought passage would be easy and quick;8 after it, he knew he could expect opposition, and it was then that he decided to separate the pro­ jects, for it was clear that he would have difficulty putting together a united front even among his fellow ministers. In Pazukhin’s scheme, the land captain was to be a salaried officer of the central government who would be the virtual ruler—a small autocrat in his own right—of the peasantry in his district. He was to be chosen by the minister of the interior from names put forward by the local gentry in the district where he operated. Since he would as­ sume duties formerly performed by the justices of the peace, that of­ fice was to be abolished and the land captain was to exercise both judi­ cial and administrative functions, in direct violation of the principle of separation of powers promulgated in the Judicial Statute of 1864. On April 2, 1886, Tolstoi called the first in what was to be a series of conferences. The results dispelled all notions of speedy passage for the proposed reform. The ministers, particularly Manasein and Pobe­ donostsev, both jurists, rejected one of the basic principles embodied in the project, the delegation of both administrative and judicial pow­ ers to the land captain. While not objecting to the idea of establishing firm control over the peasantry, they insisted that a peasant reform should limit itself to delegating all supervisory duties over the peas­ antry to the present justices of the peace.9 Pazukhin, who was single-minded in the pursuit of his plans, char176

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acterized this first meeting as a “victory of the liberal party over reac­ tion” and went so far as to accuse Manasein of being both “head of the liberal party” and the conspirator responsible for Pobedonostsev’s negative attitude.10 Meshcherskii, who heard about the matter sec­ ondhand, thought in contrast that Pobedonostsev was the main villain and the one responsible for Manasein’s opposition.11 Still another source, Feoktistov, who heard about the meeting from Ostrovskii, re­ ported that all three ministers were solidly opposed to the project and that neither Pazukhin nor Tolstoi had been convincing in his argu­ ments for it. Such talk drove Tolstoi to talk of resignation, but Pazu­ khin prevailed upon him to stay on. Tolstoi decided instead to com­ plain directly to the tsar about Manasein, whom he regarded as his prime opponent in general and whom he could not forgive for turn­ ing Pobedonostsev, whose support he wanted badly, against the pro­ ject.12Pazukhin still thought it possible to get Pobedonostsev to change his mind and asked Katkov to exert his good offices.13 The picture that emerges from such conflicting interpretations of who was opposed to what is hardly clear except in one respect: neither Pobedonostsev, nor Manasein, nor Ostrovskii was willing to support the Pazukhin-Tolstoi proposal in its original form. Pobedonostsev’s role and even attitudes in the whole matter are particulary difficult to clarify. He was generally in sympathy with the program of recon­ solidating the position of the autocracy as the prime influence over all aspects of Russian life. He did not approve of the reforms undertaken during the rule of Alexander II, but he thought it unrealistic to try to return to the conditions of prereform Russia. As a result, he was often led to adopt a middle-of-the-road position that in effect amounted to a defense of the status quo. His reputation as Russia’s archreactionary, however, seems on closer inspection hardly to be deserved: his posi­ tion was highly visible, but usually it was by no means extreme. In the case of the land captain project, Pobedonostsev objected to the land captain’s assumption of judicial and administrative functions because such a confusion of duties would bring about clashes and con­ flicts with judicial authorities on a local level. His objection to such a merging of functions stemmed from his legal training and did not contradict his well-known opposition to an independent judiciary. Pobedonostsev also argued that the land captain’s position was not tied to any specific provincial organ, which would leave the ground open for further conflict. But he did not object in principle to the es­ tablishment of an institution concerned solely with the peasantry, and 177

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this position in the end led him to vote with Tolstoi and what became his minority party, with whose ideological position he was in any case in greater sympathy. The troubles with Pobedonostsev aside, it was clear at the very be­ ginning of discussions that there would be a great deal of opposition within governmental circles about the means of reform, even from those who because of their generally traditionalist stance had been expected to support the measure with little hesitation. As Pobedono­ stsev cautiously expressed the issue in a letter to Alexander III, it was the opinion of the concerned ministers that it was impossible to return Russia to the prereform era in the way that Pazukhin’s project proposed.14 To avoid some of the difficulties raised by the ministers, a special conference was convened within the Ministry of Interior to discuss re­ working the project. Minor revisions were made, but the main dif­ ference in the second project consisted in the preservation of the of­ fice of justice of the peace. The judicial functions of the land captain were also retained, however, in basically intact form, and the number of justices of the peace was to be reduced. Finally, the powers of the land captain were not, according to the new project, to be exercised in most cities, but only in the countryside. The concession regarding jus­ tices of the peace was made over the strong objections of Pazukhin, who wrote to Katkov that the office of land captain made “the exis­ tence of the justices of the peace senseless. Their abolition is necessary and makes easier the task of reforming the courts, whose structure is as much a deformity as are their very principles.” 15 In December of 1886 Tolstoi presented the revised reform pro­ gram to the tsar, who cleared it for further action.16 This came at a ministerial conference on January 3, 1887, at which the project was approved for introduction to the State Council early the following month. It was at this point that the first of a series of hitches showed up. Tolstoi, it appeared, had attempted to deceive his colleagues about the contents of the revised project and had also withheld information from the tsar about what he had conceded to the opposition. As it turned out upon the project’s introduction to the State Council, Tol­ stoi had acquainted the ministers only with those points of the revised project on which there was general agreement. Thus he had men­ tioned that the land captain was to be concerned exclusively with peasant affairs, but had failed to point out that the new project still retained the provision to which his colleagues had most objected, the land captain’s exercise of judicial powers.17 178

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When Polovtsov met later in February with the three concerned ministers, Pobedonostsev explained that they had been informed only of the general features of the project and not of its details. Manasein, he added, was the minister most directly responsible for and con­ cerned with the project, and Manasein, for his part, affirmed that he had been “an opponent from beginning to end” and that he would “write a detailed refutation” of it, which he then proceeded to do.18 At about this time Polovtsov learned from Alexander III that Tol­ stoi had indicated to him that there existed a high degree of minis­ terial unity on the project.19 This was an important consideration, since some time earlier Alexander, on the basis of Tolstoi’s assurances, had ordered that Council deliberations be concluded by the summer; according to Pazukhin, he had repeatedly told Grand Duke Mikhail that he wanted the whole thing “over with as quickly as possible.”20 Several factors may account for Tolstoi’s deception and equivoca­ tion. Having secured the tsar’s trust, Tolstoi was left to pursue the matter in the way he thought would best secure passage. Alexander was by this time relatively uninterested in questions of internal policy and legislation, and he left these concerns almost entirely to Tolstoi while devoting his own time to matters of foreign policy, a realm in which the results he desired seemed more readily attainable. (Pazu­ khin, typically, saw the whole world from the vantage point of his project and complained bitterly to Katkov that Alexander “is little oc­ cupied with our affair. He did not even finish reading the supreme report on the reform.”)21 On the matter of ministerial unity, Tolstoi’s pretense may well have come about as a result of his real fears of opposition in the State Council: according to Meshcherskii and Feoktistov, he expected that “almost three-quarters of the State Council would attack him.”22 Given such an anticipation, he may well have been desperate enough to attempt to bully his ministerial colleagues into submission by imply­ ing to the tsar that they were all in agreement with him and then let­ ting them know that the tsar was under the impression he had their support. This was all the more possible as it was general knowledge that he enjoyed the tsar’s full trust, and this in itself limited the minis­ ters’ ability to counter him. Tolstoi’s fear that he would find a majority of the State Council in opposition was by no means unjustified. Of the sixty-five members of the General Assembly who voted on his project, fifty-two (or a full 80%) opposed it. Further, some of those who ended up voting for it for reasons of policy—and this included the trio Manasein, Pobedo179

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nostsev, and Ostrovskii—in fact opposed it and were prepared to sab­ otage its implementation.23 On January 23, 1889, the memoranda containing the Council’s mi­ nority and majority opinions were sent on to the tsar. To everyone’s surprise and consternation, they were returned to the State Council five days later with a resolution from Alexander III reading: “I agree with the opinion of the thirteen members. I desire the justices of the peace . . . to be abolished in order to ensure the necessary number of land captains. . . . A portion of the competence of the justices of the peace can be transferred to the land captains and . . . the peasant courts, and a lesser portion, including the more serious matters, can be transferred to the circuit courts. At any rate, I desire without fail that this change will not disturb the final review of the project by the summer vacation.”24 But Alexander did not “agree with the thirteen members,” except perhaps in spirit. He had rejected both the minority and the majority position and was insisting that the statute incorpo­ rate the original wording and form of Tolstoi’s project as it had stood even before the initial series of ministerial conferences with Manasein, Ostrovskii, and Pobedonostsev. His decision to include that sec­ tion of the proposal, which had never even been submitted for consid­ eration to the State Council, caused great procedural confusion. This was partly because the tsar had used incorrect wording in his resolution, since he had in fact not confirmed the minority opinion. He had directed the passage of an entirely different proposal and should therefore have expressed his wish as a supreme command di­ recting the course and outcome of debate. Polovtsov, who was meticu­ lous in his insistence upon the observance of proper form in Council procedure, arranged a meeting with Alexander to request that just this be done, arguing that the resolution as it stood was incorrect be­ cause it contained a basic contradiction. At first Alexander hesitated and seemed on the verge of conceding Polovtsov’s point; he called in Tolstoi for consultation and then adamantly refused to change either the wording or the form of his resolution.25 Strangely enough, the villain in all this seems not to have been Tol­ stoi, who was as surprised by the tsar’s action as everyone else, but rather Meshcherskii, whose star was just rising at this time. According to Meshcherskii, Senator Tatishchev, a friend of Tolstoi’s and a mem­ ber of the State Council, talked to him about the differences between Tolstoi’s original proposal and the project he submitted to the Coun­ cil. Tatishchev later asked Meshcherskii to inform the tsar about con180

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cessions that Tolstoi was keeping hidden, such as the retention of the justices of the peace, on the grounds that the project as reformulated by Tolstoi did not fulfill the tsar’s express wish for “an authority close to the people.’’ Meshcherskii chose not to do this himself, but he did agree to pass on to the tsar with a cover letter of his own a note com­ posed, according to Tatishchev, by “state people” to “clarify” the issue for the tsar. The note concluded with a recommendation for the ac­ tion that the tsar eventually took in his final resolution, and one can guess that it was probably written by Pazukhin, who had strongly op­ posed Tolstoi’s concessions all along. In what is probably the cover letter Meshcherskii mentions in his memoirs, we find an outline of the amputation undergone by Tolstoi’s original project, beginning with the charge that Manasein and Pobedonostsev (presumably in contrast to Tolstoi and Meshcherskii him­ self) were “both bureaucrats who did not understand the villages and the provinces.” Meshcherskii then outlined the judicial provisions of the first project in its uncut form, stressing that Pobedonostsev and Manasein “had secured a fatal concession from Tolstoi,” namely the justices of the peace. This, he went on to claim, would lead to “some­ thing worse than powerlessness and chaos in the district and the paralysis of the new land captain.” Meshcherskii finished his helpful collusion with the suggestion that Tolstoi would be happy if, even without his knowledge, the tsar were to reinstate his original project by fiat.26 Whatever the fact or fiction in Meshcherskii’s account of his own exploits, there can be little doubt that by the time Alexander had to make his final decision he had been informed about the changes Tol­ stoi’s project had suffered, and that Meshcherskii was his main infor­ mant. Whether Meshcherskii’s apparent importance came about be­ cause Tolstoi had not kept the tsar informed or because the tsar, whose memory was short in any case, was simply confused about the nature of a project he had difficulty understanding, is not clear. We do know that at the time of the ministerial conferences Pobedonostsev had outlined to Alexander the contents of the original proposal, and that Meshcherskii had discussed in the Citizen (which Alexander read) changes made in its original form.27 But since Tolstoi apparently never informed Alexander about the changes of which Meshcherskii wrote, it is entirely possible that the information in the paper may only have confused the tsar. Whatever the case, Alexander’s trust had been and continued to be 181

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with Tolstoi and his original formulation, happened to the project and was convinc< skii, that this was an important matter and were a mistake, he acted quickly and decis thing in its original form. The result, acco that when Alexander called Tolstoi in to Tolstoi responded by saying, “If I were no ship you upon my knees.” Polovtsov, incic cedural correctness, confirms that Tolstoi 1 tion before Grand Duke Mikhail, and also i that he himself would not have had “the tsar” that he confirm the original proposal All of this is interesting and informative sip about the petty intrigues at Alexander’; most decisive acts of Alexander’s reign. Su« including Alexander II’s forcing of the Ei the main they went back to the reign of I for giving detailed instructions as well as : ects at will. What makes this particular de< intriguing is that it concerns a matter in v interest or involvement. It also clearly sh certain kinds of ideological preconvictioi conventional wisdom of the period. As far as Alexander is concerned, the pi act on this matter, about which he cared answer lies in the personalities involved. If he trusted Tolstoi, and this was Tolstoi’s ] nature of institutions: in this case a mini firmly backing, even pushing, a course of 2 vinced that he approved of, rather than fig as had been the case with the judicial reft ministry seemed all too ready to sabotage i fore—and that happened often enough another part seems to lie in the tsar’s very ] ernment, even as he acted to assert conti ander could be persuaded that this proj< that was because he could easily be convinc on the brink of a jacquerie and that the str endowed with broad authority could averi slennyi i besposhchadnyi”; a revolt, in Pus sense nor mercy. But if he could be convin 182

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only gullible, but even more ignorant of the countryside (as indeed he was) than Meshcherskii claimed Pobedonostsev and Manasein were.29 Above and beyond all this, that it was on this issue that Alexander chose to make so bold a stand seems indicative of his own hesitation and distance from the affairs of his government. On a matter like the judicial statute, which he followed closely and had strong feelings about, he held back, restrained by what he was able to perceive as the complexity of the matter. But perhaps he also felt boxed in and frus­ trated by holding back and knowing that he had to hold back. Here, on a matter of potentially greater impact, he plunged ahead. One can­ not but help picture him steeling himself to do so, drawing up the courage to assert his will and take decisive action by cutting through at one stroke the incomprehensible Gordian knot before him. That he had doubts about the correctness of his course is indicated by Polov­ tsov’s testimony about his initial hesitation in going through with the resolution as it stood. That he was determined nonetheless is indi­ cated by the manner in which he stood firm once he had Tolstoi by his side for support. On the other side of the issue motivations seem at least as compli­ cated. An overwhelming majority formed against the land captain in an unlikely coalition that cut across ideological lines. A group of lib­ eral reformers led by Stoianovskii and Nikolai, and including former associates of Loris-Melikov, such as Kakhanov and Abaza, was joined by men who had been associated with Kakhanov on the Kakhanov Commission, like Staritskii, Liuboshchinskii, and Frishch. Another group consisted of Council members who had been connected with the preparation and execution of the judicial statutes. More surpris­ ing was a second major faction, made up of conservatives, including Minister of the Imperial Household Prince I. Vorontsov-Dashkov, former Minister of Interior (under Alexander II) A. E. Timashev, and even the three grand dukes, Mikhail, Vladimir, and Aleksei. What makes this broad-based agreement so striking is that the office of land captain could be, and has been, portrayed as a progressive intervention into the countryside by the government.30 And yet, for two reasons, it was overwhelmingly perceived as reactionary and retrogressive. First, the office of the land captain formally institutionalized, albeit on a minor scale, the exercise of arbitrary power. As one opponent put it, to institute the land captain was to set loose “10,000 petty des­ pots” over the face of Russia.31 Even those like Pobedonostsev who most firmly believed in stern law to preserve order felt nonetheless 183

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that this order was to be preserved specifically by law—and not by ar­ bitrary personal action by a government representative who com­ bined the functions of police, judge, and penal officer. The second reason—and it is connected to the first—is that the land captain’s office, because it was to deal exclusively with the peas­ antry, flew in the face of everything that was considered progressive and modern and part of Russia’s movement along the path toward ad­ vanced European civilization. With the Great Reforms, Russia had es­ tablished a set of formal institutions and structures that, on paper at least, were in some ways more advanced than those of many Euro­ pean nations—this was particularly true of the new legal structures. The land captain marked a return to estatism, and this was retrogres­ sive and the opposite of modern. Thus the main subject of debate on the project in the combined departments of the State Council came back again and again to this question: whether “it is desirable to insti­ tute, as proposed by the project, the new post of land captain exclu­ sively for the peasant estate, or [whether] it is appropriate to give [the office] a general character and introduce it organically into the exist­ ing institutions of the province.” 32 In response, Tolstoi claimed that action was needed immediately, that there was no time for widespread local reform. In addition, he pointed out, all previous legislation had been piecemeal, and, besides, widespread reform would be dangerous now in view of “the habits of mind of the population.” But that what all of this sparring was really about was the fear that legislation directed solely to the peasantry might mark an opening wedge in a campaign to reinstitute some of the provisions of serfdom was indicated in an exchange between Man­ surov and Tolstoi. Mansurov objected particularly to the right given to the land captain to reverse orders issued by peasant organs, and observed that the question of reorganizing the structure of peas­ ant self-administration demanded serious study for which the State Council did not yet have the necessary materials. At this point Tolstoi expostulated that now he understood Mansurov, for he obviously was one of those who thought “that the government has no right to touch the charter once given to the peasants.”33 And that indeed was just what a great many people in government thought or at least feared: that this was the opening step in a cam­ paign to revoke some of the provisions of that charter by reemphasiz­ ing formal dividing marks of estate. And there is yet another factor in all of this. Pazukhin’s intention, in contrast to Tolstoi’s, was in fact to spearhead a gentry reaction. Pazukhin made no secret of his desire to 184

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see a reassertion of gentry privilege and prerogative—and specifically gentry— that is, the landowning pomeshchiki—rather than nobiliar— which would include the despised bureaucrats of the higher ranks. It was part of his overall program that service privileges and respon­ sibilities should revert to their previous close association with land­ owning status. His notion that some kind of gentry-cum-autocracy dyarchy could be reestablished along the lines of what had existed— at least in fond memory—under Catherine was quaint if not down­ right quixotic, but it was widely known (Pazukhin published a long ar­ ticle on this and others of his ideas both in Katkov’s Russian Messenger and as a separate brochure).34 More to the point, any such program, no matter how unfeasible it may seem today, could only have been seen by many Council mem­ bers as a threat to themselves and their noble status. Pazukhin’s plan, by making only landowning nobles eligible for privileged service, would reverse the existing relationship between service and class, which had led to the ennoblement of service people. Though the land captain as such involved no such change, any reversion to strict estatism implied a threat to the mobility of the society as a whole and, by extension, to the mobility of the most upwardly mobile of all the ele­ ments within that society—that majority of sitting State Council mem­ bers whose own forebears a few generations back had certainly not been members of the landowning gentry. In spite of this apprehension, the opposition proved fragile, as can be seen in the dispatch with which, after receiving Alexander’s reso­ lution, the combined departments proceeded to execute the tsar’s order. Still, even with all the will in the world, it took another fifteen sessions in the departments to work out the final form of the project. This shows, as does nothing else, the importance of the procedural and clerical role of the Council even in a matter in which it was forced to act purely as a rubber stamp. Before debate could be renewed, the judicial provisions had to be worked out by Manasein, who continued to move as slowly as possible and, according to Polovtsov, still “hon­ estly wishes for its destruction.”35 Manasein first proposed that part of the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace be transferred to judicial investigators rather than to the land captain. Abaza objected that this would perpetuate the justices of the peace under a different name, since these investigators, if they were handling both criminal and civil cases, would have taken over most of the justices’ duties. In the end Manasein had to agree to give virtually all the powers previously held by justices of the peace to the 185

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land captain. A little later, on June 8, Manasein joined an attempt by Kakhanov and Peretts to open the post of land captain to all social classes and not have it restricted to the nobility; this failed on pro­ cedural grounds, for the trio had neglected to inform Chairman Ni­ kolai of their plan.36 During this time Alexander was becoming increasingly unhappy both with the Council and with Manasein. In June he complained openly to Polovtsov about his fear that Manasein’s proposals were “so unsatisfactory that I think his intention is to scuttle the whole project.” Alexander’s fear had been greatly exacerbated by Tolstoi’s death in April, which came to him as a “terrible blow.” He did not trust the Council and feared that it would still try to circumvent his directive. “The majority of Council members,” he told Grand Duke Mikhail on one occasion, “have an ulterior motive and are thinking about a con­ stitution.” I. N. Durnovo, Tolstoi’s successor at Interior, told Polovtsov that he even felt “that the State Council would exult in victory over him” if confirmation was not accomplished by summer.37 Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this episode is that Alexander’s fears seem to have had little or no foundation. Manasein and others might obfuscate here and there, but there was no thought of or­ ganized opposition, let alone rebellion. The obstruction resembled more that of schoolchildren trying to get away with something behind teacher’s back than that of what in theory were the most powerful elders and senior statesmen of the empire. If, indeed, as the tsar thought, the Council wanted to play at parliament, then it needed a great deal of rehearsal before it could take on the role. Potentially, perhaps, the Council had the power to defy the tsar. But to have done so it would have had to think it had the power, and it had no such thought: power here was so totally divorced from any base—institutional, personal, national, regional, or whatever—that it amounted to power in name only, and hardly even that. The State Council of the time of Alexander I might conceivably, under the proper circumstances, have evolved into the kind of institution whose members counted as forces either in their own right or as representa­ tives of some constituency outside and apart from the government. But this was very far from the case in 1889. An Abaza, for instance, might be of Romanian origin, but he was totally deracinated and hardly representative of Romanian interests or anything else: he was a wealthy, totally russified servitor of the emperor and nothing more. And though Abaza was himself both totally opposed to the project and one of those whom Alexander most feared, he was also one of the 186

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leaders of the Council’s attempt at immediate and abject reconcilia­ tion with the demands of the tsar. In this he went to such measures that he earned the gratitude of his erstwhile enemy Tolstoi, who went so far as to ask Alexander to award Abaza a high decoration for his services. And indeed in 1889 Abaza received the order of St. Andrew, first class.38 Abaza justified his role as one of defending the State Council as an institution. He insisted to his friend Polovtsov that it was “necessary to be very careful in the matter of the land captains and to display every zeal for its quick ending.39 And it seems that almost everyone thought more or less as he did, that any active or even passive resistance to the project would endanger permanently the delicate balance between the tsar and Council—as indeed it would have. But rather than try to set up some kind of new working arrangement, the entrenched bu­ reaucrats on the Council felt it preferable to readjust their own view and compromise their principles rather than their posts. By having Tolstoi process the land captain project through the Council in the first place, even knowing beforehand the resistance it was likely to encounter, Alexander was giving formal observance to the principles of legality. In doing so, he demonstrated the impor­ tance he attached to the mantle of legality provided by the State Council. The crucial factor is that it was generally thought that this was the Council’s only lever in working with the tsar, and the Council’s character as an institution representative of no independent base of power seemed to assure just this. But as we have seen, the Council did have the power; when it was a matter of dealing with affairs of real consequence to itself, it proved able to prevail against the tsar and all his allies. The problem, from the point of view of anyone hoping the Council would act to protect or restrain the autocracy, was that the only affairs that seemed of real consequence to it were matters of bu­ reaucratic order, procedure, and status. No one, either individually or as part of a group, seems to have conceived of anything else. No one, not even members possessed of great personal wealth—like, indeed, Abaza—seems to have thought of defying the tsar. The men in the Council may well have been men of great personal courage in their private lives, but in public life they knew no other role than that of dependency. And one should expect nothing else: the system of ad­ vancement kept men of strong will and dominating character from reaching the top. And when in exceptional circumstances one did, like a Witte or a Konstantin, he remained, nonetheless, removable. In the end the Council represented nothing apart from the bureau187

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cracy—and the bureaucracy, though it had achieved some indepen­ dence, was in the last analysis an arm of the administration, that is, of the tsar. Thus when Alexander’s son Nicholas II decided a decade hence that he was not obliged to respect, in the manner his father had, the forms of procedural legality, he went ahead to rule with pro­ gressively less and less assistance from the Council. And there was nothing the Council could do to force him to pay it heed, even though by the turn of the century his rule had resulted in a situation of in­ stability and unrest that verged on paralysis of the upper reaches of government. Alexander III, in contrast, managed to ensure a considerable de­ gree of stability, at least at the top reaches of the governmental struc­ ture, by his observance of most of the formal procedures of legality. That this stability was closer to stasis than to the equilibrium of a smoothly operating establishment can be seen in the Council’s quick accession to Alexander’s demands once they were actually put in the form of demands (though it is interesting that Alexander refused to give them the formal substance of demands). The tsar wished to act as his own prime minister, and by thus intervening decisively at a crucial moment he was able to do just that. The result, however, was that mat­ ters of major importance to the empire were based, as in this instance, on the ideas and notions of only a few men at the apex of the social structure, as far removed as it was possible to be from the society they were trying to rule. Perhaps the saving feature in all this was what Starr refers to as the “under government” of Russia:40 decisions made at the apex often did not penetrate into the countryside simply be­ cause the administration had no representatives to take them there, so that the paralysis of any ability to do good was perhaps balanced by a corresponding inability to effect harm.

188

CHAPTER

11 And More Order he Tolstoi-Pazukhin land captain statute of 1889 was only one part of a major administrative counter-reform. The second part was the intended reorganization of the provincial institutions of local self-government, the zemstvos. As worked out by Pazukhin, the zem­ stvo project increased bureaucratic controls over the zemstvos and, like the land captain statute, gave the local nobility increased responsi­ bility for provincial affairs. The most important provision of the proj­ ect was the proposal to abrogate the independence of the zemstvos through the abolition of the elected executive boards (uprava) and their replacement by a new appointed zemstvo office (prisutstvie). In his memorandum of 1888 to the State Council on the proposed re­ form, Tolstoi insisted that the abrogation of zemstvo independence and the subordination of the zemstvos to administrative control were necessary to guarantee the success of zemstvo reform. The proposal to change the elective principle of the zemstvo assemblies to favor the increased participation of the nobility and a further automatic inclusion of large landowners without election was of secondary importance.1 The zemstvo project was introduced into the State Council on Janu­ ary 8, 1888, but was not brought up for discussion until March of 1890. At that time a constellation of forces emerged similar to the one that had formed during debate on the land captain project. As in that debate, the ministers split into two groups, each of which had its sup­ porters in the Council. Alexander, as he had done earlier, let it be known unofficially that he supported the hard-line position. In still other respects, the zemstvo reform paralleled the land captain statute in intent, form, and treatment. Yet the final decisions on the two bills differed widely: in the one case, debate in the State Council affected virtually nothing, while in the second, State Council debate produced

T

189

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a bill different both in particulars and in broad outline from that orig­ inally proposed by the Ministry of Interior. Although Tolstoi’s zemstvo project was submitted to the Council in January 1888 and the concerned ministers had been asked to submit their comments at that time, no responses actually came until after Tolstoi’s death in April of 1889. The most extensive memorandum was again that of Minister of Justice Manasein who objected to the main principles of the proposed reform and, indeed, to the very idea of a new law, pointing out that Tolstoi had given very little evidence of the need for wide-scale revision of the existing statute. At the same time, Manasein voiced his approval of at least certain sections of Tol­ stoi’s project. Thus while he opposed strongly the abrogation of zem­ stvo independence that lay at the heart of the project, he conceded the advisability of strengthening administrative control and of induc­ ing the local nobility to play a more active role in zemstvo affairs; he even favored the automatic inclusion of large landowners in the zem­ stvo assemblies, though he proposed that this be done on a limited basis and with the provision that minimum educational standards be met. Still, Manasein’s reaction was, on the whole, decidedly negative. State Comptroller D. M. Sol’skii sent a much shorter memorandum similar in tone and form to Manasein’s. Sol’skii also pointed out that Tolstoi had provided no rationale for a new statute and went on to argue for a widening of the functions and duties assigned to the zem­ stvos in the original statute of 1864. At the same time, Sol’skii also made several concessions to Tolstoi, particularly with regard to changes that would allow for increased administrative control.2 The positions of Sol’skii and Manasein were basically the same as those of the majority coalition, which on the whole supported the basic principles of the 1864 statute, while acknowledging that some change in the statute was desirable and perhaps even necessary. Thus Ostrovskii, for instance, did not oppose the proposed reform with a statement of principle, but did express his objection to the abrogation of zemstvo independence, at least partly on the grounds that under such conditions the local population would lose all interest in the con­ duct of zemstvo affairs. At the same time Ostrovskii, like Sol’skii and Manasein, was in favor of increasing administrative authority over the zemstvos. The other group of ministers, including Delianov, K. N. Pos’et, and Vyshnegradskii, supported the project virtually in full and recommended only narrow changes involving the particular province of their own ministries.'’ In all of this Pobedonostsev took a singular stand, though again one 190

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that in large measure straddled both positions. On the one hand, Pobedonostsev argued with the reformists against the abrogation of zemstvo independence on the grounds that the transformation of zemstvos into bureaucratic institutions would deprive the local popu­ lation of the freedom necessary to work for its own interests. He also wanted to limit the rights of the minister of interior and favored maintaining the Senate as the highest arbiter of disputes between the zemstvos and the ministry. On the other hand, some of the notions he put forward were even more restrictive than Tolstoi’s. Thus he pro­ posed a limitation on the membership of the zemstvo assemblies that would ensure their more “reliable” composition, and he favored clos­ ing meetings to the public, raising property qualifications, limiting the inclusion of commercial-artisan (meshchanstvo) membership, and ex­ cluding Jews outright. He also objected to the automatic inclusion of big landowners in the zemstvo assemblies and pointed out, in what seems a personal tone,4 that experience had shown that the wealthy were not necessarily always reliable from the government’s point of view. Upon receipt of ministerial recommendations and reactions, Minis­ ter of Interior Durnovo made a few changes, but did nothing to alter the overall substance or tone of Tolstoi’s original version. Under the new project, reintroduced into the Council on February 4, 1890, the executive boards of the zemstvos were preserved, but they were sub­ jected to so much administrative control, from the Ministry of Inte­ rior in particular, that all independence was effectively lost. Other provisions also changed little. The zemstvo offices (prisutstvie) were to decide conflicts between governors and the zemstvos, but the minister of interior was left as the final arbiter. The provision for the automatic inclusion of large landowners was dropped at Pobedonostsev’s sug­ gestion, but peasant representatives were to be completely controlled by the administration, and the minister of interior could appoint to the assemblies additional members who “enjoyed the special confi­ dence of their localities.”5 In March and April of 1890 debate on the new project began in the combined Departments of Law, Economy, and Civil and Religious Af­ fairs. As usual, materials on the course of debates are contained in the departments’ official protocols and journals, but in this case they re­ flected the substance and course of debates even less than is usual. The journals record only the final debates, and the protocols, which usually provide a more detailed account of the full course of debates, here touch upon none of the reasons for the eventual changes. This 19 1

T he C o u n ter -R eforms

unusual silence was apparently the result of a compromise between Durnovo and the Council. Durnovo made important concessions to the Council, but he did not want explicit statements to this effect pre­ served in writing. In this way he hoped to protect himself from charges of being overly soft, even though these documents were relegated to the Council archives upon completion of debate and there would be very little chance of their being seen by the tsar or one of his infor­ mants.6 In spite of such difficulties with documentation, one can still make some reasonable conjectures about the substance of debates on the basis of the wording of both protocols and journals. In addition, Polovtsov’s diary provides useful information, even though Polovtsov was far from an uninvolved observer. He opposed the project and managed in his short outlines of Council debates, made for the eyes of the tsar alone, to favor the arguments and the party he supported. At the same time he commented while writing these that he had “to make sure to report the whole truth, but in doing so not present Dur­ novo in too pitiful as aspect. First, he [Durnovo] has the tsar’s orders not to give in, and second, such a concessive minister is a treasure for the Council.”7 When debate on the project opened in the combined departments, it quickly became clear that the majority of the membership decisively opposed the abrogation of zemstvo independence and insisted that the principle of election to the zemstvo executive boards be pre­ served, since “the success of zemstvo business demands above all com­ plete unanimity and friendly work between the assemblies and their boards, and this cannot be expected if the boards are appointed by the administration.”8 On this point Durnovo conceded almost imme­ diately and thus undercut, in effect, virtually the whole point of Tol­ stoi’s original project. The right of the minister of interior to appoint members to the assemblies at his own discretion was also conceded to the opposition, though an extension of administrative control was gained through a new provision that all board members had to be confirmed by the governor after election (previously this had applied only to the board chairman). In addition, service on the zemstvo boards was now declared to be state service and subject to the provi­ sions thereof.9 A curious feature of the department journals is that they give the impression that Durnovo had agreed to preserve the elective princi­ ple from the very beginning. The journals acknowledged that some changes were necessary in the 1864 statute and proceeded to ascer­ tain the scope of such change through an appraisal of the past activity 192

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of the zemstvos: “If . . . one evaluates the general results of the ac­ tivities of the zemstvos over the past quarter-century, it appears with­ out doubt that the calling of locally elected people to the management of local matters significantly furthered the improvement of living con­ ditions in the provinces and [led to] a much wider satisfaction of the needs of the local population. Therefore the proposal of the minister of interior to preserve . . . the basic forms and scope of business that the zemstvos had received in the law of 1864 appears to be completely correct.” The journals continued with the acknowledgment that “the main task of the present review of the zemstvo statute should consist in [achieving] such a concordance of state interests and independence of action of local institutions as is necessary for the successful execu­ tion of the tasks with which [the zemstvos] have been charged.” 10 In contrast to Tolstoi’s charge that the zemstvos were excessively liberal and involved in politics, the report of the departments was much more positive. When the departments turned their attention to the electoral rights of various social groups, agreement was made, in effect, to allow and encourage a deepening division of social classes in the provinces. Though this was a retreat from views voiced during the discussion of the land captain project, it was in basic accord with the original statute of 1864. That law had sanctioned the division of the local populace into three electoral colleges and, borrowing a principle from Western Europe, had imposed property qualifications on the first two. The de­ partments agreed to lower property qualifications for nobles while further limiting the electoral participation of the peasantry. A whole series of further changes from the original project fol­ lowed. The proposal that members elected to the assemblies, even against their own will, were obliged to participate in assembly busi­ ness, was changed to a provision giving unwillingly elected members the option of resigning immediately upon election; their participation in the assemblies if they did not immediately resign was, however, kept mandatory. Upon the insistence of the reformist group, the requirement that all zemstvo decisions be subject to administrative confirmation was limited to certain conditions, though administrative abuse remained possible: confirmation was necessary on matters involving “violation of a law or of state interest or involving clear harm to the local popu­ lation.” The original project proposed an indefinite period during which governors could protest zemstvo decisions, but this was now limited to two weeks. Further, the zemstvos received the right to ap!9 3

T he C o u n ter -R eforms

peal cases of questionable legality to the Senate, whereas the original project delegated this right to the zemstvo offices it had proposed to create. Although the original proposal had provided that the elective zemstvo boards would be placed under the supervision of the admin­ istration, in the revised project they remained under the control of their assemblies. Still, gubernatorial control over the boards was in the end increased, since governors were given the right of “revision,” and the zemstvo offices were empowered to subject members of the boards to disciplinary action." Once these changes had been agreed upon, passage of the proposal came quickly. The recommendations were accepted by the General Assembly of the Council in May of 1890, and the statute was con­ firmed by Alexander III in July of the same year. In this battle, unlike the one around the land captain statute, the majority coalition in the Council had been able to extract sizable concessions from the minister of interior and his allies in the Council. The reformers had been able to avoid both the abrogation of zemstvo independence and the subor­ dination of the zemstvos to administrative control, so that the statute of 1890 preserved many more similarities with the statute of 1864 than had been originally intended by its framers. S. Ia. Tseitlin, a his­ torian of zemstvo reform, concluded that this law was “nothing more than a second, greatly inferior edition of the statute of January 1, 1864,” and B. B. Veselovskii, the historian of the zemstvo, commented that “the reform of 1890 came into being almost unnoticed, hardly attracting any attention, and the reason for this lies partly in that it did not change much de facto.” 12 Nothing shows more clearly the arbitrariness and absence o f regu­ lar procedure in the workings of the government, even at the very seat and core of what regular procedure there existed, than a com­ parison of the fates of the land captain and zemstvo statutes. And nothing could show more emphatically how little there existed in the government of anything approaching a regular and consistent set of policy objectives. This applies as much to the workings of the Council as it does to the actions of the tsar, as much to the ideas of the reform­ ers as it does to those of the traditionalists. Neither side in the contro­ versies that revolved around these proposals was able consistently to achieve its objectives, and neither side felt fully free to impose its will upon the other. Nor should this surprise us, for it is what we expect as the normal relationship of forces at the center of government. In this case, though, the normality of the relationship was entirely a matter of appearances; it had little or nothing to do with an equilib194

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rium of forces. The Council, as representative of the higher bureau­ cracy, had de facto powers of stalling and obfuscation that amounted to something close to veto power; de jure the Council had no powers at all, only delegated functions. The autocrat, in contrast, had no lim­ itations on his de jure powers. And, as we have seen, he could and did use them to the full to force Council action along what he considered suitable lines. But as we have also seen, the occasions for such use often made little or no sense from the point of view of any consistent development of policy. And on yet other matters, the sovereign was in fact limited by the extent to which the bureaucracy ostensibly at his command would or would not actually obey his commands, explicitly voiced though they might be. By the end of his reign, for all his efforts to reassume control over his bureaucratic servitors, Alexander III was no nearer that elusive goal than he had been thirteen years previously. Given that he had made the attempt and failed, it would seem that the exercise of un­ trammeled autocratic control through regular channels was an even more distant goal at the end of his reign than it had been at the begin­ ning. But this should not surprise us; as already suggested, autocracy and regular procedure, like autocracy and legality of other than the Polizeistaat variety, involve necessary logical contradictions. This, of course, is no more than the autocrats and their partisans had argued all along, even if the full consequences of their argument had been perceived only irregularly. That others, and even the autocrats them­ selves on more than one occasion, could believe and argue the op­ posite can perhaps best be understood as a tribute to the very human ability to believe what one desperately wants to believe. The desire to believe in the possibility of an autocracy of law did not end with the death of Alexander III and the accession of his son, but the chasm separating that belief from reality seemed to widen with every passing year. If in 1881 perhaps a majority of educated, even nongovernmental, observers still believed it could be realized, this was hardly the case ten years into the reign of Nicholas II, in 1904-1905. The crisis of belief in the legitimacy of untrammeled autocracy as a political principle, a crisis that contributed to and was part of the po­ litical chaos of the latter years of Alexander II’s reign, subsided dur­ ing the years his stolid successor sat on the throne. It subsided but did not disappear, for Nicholas II made it increasingly clear through his actions in divorcing himself from the institutional bases of govern­ ment that he did not even intend to observe the forms of procedural regularity. The crisis of belief then spread like rot through all levels of *95

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society, including, by this time, the bureaucracy that ostensibly re­ mained the tsar’s one ally among the educated classes of society. Fi­ nally, when the events of 1905—1906 showed that even the very last and most distant traditional support of the tsars, the uneducated masses of the peasantry, also shared that disbelief, it was clear to al­ most all observers that the rot in the edifice of autocracy was com­ plete. What remained was the hope that something could be con­ structed to take its place before the fall of the house of Romanov would bring with it the fall of the house of state.

Conclusion

ne does not have to look far for the reasons behind the reaction that came with the reign of Alexander III. By 1881 it was ob­ vious that the heady expectations accompanying reform were not t be realized. When the reforms proved anything but a panacea, this served to many as confirmation of the conservative fear that change would only set new troubles in motion. The country may not have been quite ready for the reaction that first began to surface in 1866, but it was more receptive by 1881, when Alexander came to the throne. No small part was played in this by the traumas of regicide many times attempted and finally consummated. The temper of the time is well indicated by a conversation the editor A. S. Suvorin re­ corded in his diary. After the unsuccessful Khalturin attempt in the Winter Palace, he sat with Dostoevsky, talking about what had just happened. If they had known of just such a conspiracy, Dostoevsky asked, would they have reported it to the police? Would they inform? They opposed the conspiracy, hated the terrorists and their aims. But would they inform? The extent to which much of literate, educated Russia must have felt implicated at least as passive accomplices in terrorism can be gauged from their conclusion. For each of them decided that, regard­ less of his horror at the prospect of regicide, still he could not have brought himself to inform.1 If two such deeply conservative men could thus implicate them­ selves in assassination, it seems not too much to suggest that many others must also have felt themselves in some measure guilty in the conspiracy when it proved finally successful. And this helps to explain in part the quiescence and acquiescence that greeted the new tsar’s firmly stated intention to reintroduce discipline and order into the af­ fairs of state. Nor was that the only reason. Even the most successful of the new reforms, the Judicial Statute of 1864, was, in the words of Murav’ov,

O

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C onclusion

“neudobno—odezhda ne po merke”: imported clothing that, for all its beauty, did not feel comfortable on the homegrown body that was supposed to wear it. Nonetheless, for all that the fit was at first poor, it seemed the customer still preferred his new finery to that he had just discarded, for if anything the fit there was even worse. The situation with the other reforms was very much the same. On the whole, most elements of society probably preferred the new state of affairs to the old, for there had been little enough to recommend the old. At the same time almost everyone felt, and sometimes strongly, that the new still left a great deal to be desired. For some, this was because change had not been sufficiently far-reaching, for others, be­ cause it had reached entirely too far. In some measure this was true of all the reforms, including the one almost uniformly felt by contempo­ raries and posterity to have been most needed, the Emancipation Stat­ ute of 1861. The difficulty with the emancipation was that it changed everything and not simply the relations of lord and peasant. Suddenly both were subject to the same legal code—roughly—a code that went by the book and needed bookish men to interpret it. And for a variety of rea­ sons, bookish men were needed everywhere: in the management of the economy; in the instruction of the young; in the formulation, cod­ ification, and implementation of laws; in the pursuit of crime (Do­ stoevsky’s Porfirii Petrovich is an expert if ever there was one); even in the management, training, and equipping of the military services. And these were men who could not be replaced except by others with the same training. Amateurs might be fine as confidants or ministers of interior or foreign affairs, but not as economists or artillerists or presidents of the court. By the time Alexander III came to the throne, this process had taken hold to such an extent that professional criteria and bureau­ cratic procedure dominated the majority of appointments he was able to make even to the major positions under his immediate control: to the State Council and several of the most crucial ministries. Not only could the tsar not rule alone, but in key areas he could no longer even choose the kinds of men who would help him rule. He was, instead, dependent upon an apparatus of servitors whose unchanged designa­ tion only camouflaged their much-changed status as members of a very new organization, a more or less modern, autonomous bureau­ cracy. In this, the reign of Alexander III marked the passage of deci­ sion-making authority from an autocratic tsarist administration to a no less autocratic bureaucratic administration. Two things are impor198

C onclusion

tant here: the changed nature of the bureaucratic apparatus, and the largely unchanged habits of administration by which it operated. More was changing in the bureaucracy than simply power relation­ ships and the career advantages of specialized education and expert training. Among these changes, perhaps the most important was in the sources of recruitment. There was nothing new either in the char­ acter of the Russian nobility as a service class, or in the openness of the service ranks to recruitment from the ranks of the nonnoble classes. What was new was the extent to which, on the one hand, there grew up between the first and the second half of the century a divorce between landed nobility and service nobility and, on the other, the way in which recruitment into the service nobility came increasingly from nonlanded sources, specifically raznochintsy and previous gener­ ations of service nobility. As Wortman and others have shown, a major change in the class composition of the bureaucracy was taking place with considerable rapidity during the middle years of the nineteenth century and with it a parallel shift in required credentials. The result was that over the course of the century the bureaucracy as a whole came to include simultaneously a larger portion of members born with noble status and a smaller portion from landowner origins. (We have seen this same tendency operating at an even more rapid pace within the higher bureaucracy.) As a result of this process, the link be­ tween autocrat and landed nobility, always tenuous in Russia, was rapidly threatening to disintegrate entirely. As Zaionchkovskii has said, the attitude of the gentry to service, particularly civil service, was increasingly “prenebrezhitel’noe”—disdainful—while the attitude of civil servants to the landed gentry was at best diffident and seldom even that: the Russian civil servants had little desire to identify their fate with that of the landowners, whom they saw, perceptively enough, using Bunge’s words, as a “soslovie vymyraiushchee”—a dying estate.2 The significance of this lies in the shift from a civil service tied to the class that at least since the time of Catherine had been viewed as the primary support of the autocracy to a civil service tied to no par­ ticular set of outside interests. This meant that the group traditionally seen as the mainstay of the autocracy was playing an increasingly less significant role in government and was therefore correspondingly less able to represent its interests in the formulation of policy. It might still have been true that even in the last two decades of the nineteenth cen­ tury most gentry were conservative traditionalists who supported the crown in preference to anything else. The fact of emancipation, cou­ pled with the autocracy’s refusal to tolerate gentry participation in the !9 9

C onclusion

process of government, meant that the logical rationale for such tem­ peramental inclinations was increasingly eliminated. If the autocracy was ready to deprive the landowning nobility of its status as the pre­ ferred class in the allocation of power and privilege, then there was correspondingly little reason for the landowning gentry to give its al­ legiance to the autocracy. But the disappearance, or gradual erosion, of the old mainstay of support was only part of the problem of the isolation of government from society. A second crucial element was to be found in the failure of the government to make any accommodation with the new groups that were playing an increasingly large role in the economic, intellec­ tual, and spiritual life of the country: professionals, peasant-farmers, and bourgeoisie. All of these features tie in directly with the interrelationship be­ tween the autocrat and his bureaucracy. The moral justification for autocracy in Russia during this period was the immaturity of the pop­ ulation and the need for a strong father figure to rule, govern, and above all, decide matters for his subjects. What is interesting from our point of view is that this same approach and justification were used not just by the traditionalists who wanted to preserve and extend the power of the tsar, but also by the new bureaucratic cadres that first appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. With the very best of intentions and sometimes, indeed, against their own selfinterest (this was particularly true in the era of the emancipation, when the links between civil service and landed gentry were still strong), the reformers of the Alexandrine period formulated, sup­ ported, and pushed their programs through in much the same manner as Russian programs of legislation had always been pushed through: as far removed as possible from the messiness of open political conflict and debate. The justification for this, when it was thought to need jus­ tification at all, was that of the traditionalists: the reformers knew bet­ ter what was good for society than did society. By the era of Alexander III this conviction had softened, at least to the extent that some of the architects of reform and their successors had become convinced of the need to invite at least a controlled mea­ sure of participation by the governed in the process of governance. For most, though, this went no farther than the thought that some informed members of society should be allowed to comment on pro­ posed legislation. There is little evidence that many of them had any notion of involving society in a direct way that would amount to any­ thing approximating a free expression of social forces and interests, 200

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nor that they had this in mind even as an ultimate desideratum. Most members of the government would have recoiled from such an idea in horror, the reformers no less than the traditionalists. Neither the one nor the other wanted to give up the promise they saw in absolut­ ism: the ability to do good for the country without the inefficiency of open political bargain and compromise. Even at best this proposition is arguable, but its fatal weakness in the context of the late-nineteenth-century tsarist administration lay in the manner in which that administration was almost wholly divorced from the active economic life of the country as a whole. While the face of Russian society was undergoing enormous change and the growth rate of the economy was approaching that of Japan and Sweden, the class composition of the higher bureaucracy, even as we follow it into the twentieth century, reflected only the decreased significance of the landed gentry as an economic or social force. As Zaionchkovskii has shown, the new bourgeois elements of society made almost no inroads into the bureaucracy,3 and neither did the bureaucracy find the newly available opportunity to make money through capital investment and stock ownership any more attractive than the opportunity it had al­ ways had to lose money through the ownership and management of landed estates. It is possible, as Zaionchkovskii has suggested, that in Russia, as nowhere else, such an interpenetration of governmental and economic interests was prevented by conflict-of-interest laws. The experience of other societies, where similar laws are honored as much in breach of the spirit as in observance of the letter, indicates that other forces were at work to produce the divorce in Russia between the administration and society. What is significant for our purposes is that such a breach existed and that its existence played a crucial role in the institutional relations between the higher bureaucracy and the autocrat. It is here that we can find the reasons for the standoff between the tsar and his Council that led increasingly to a total paralysis of government at its highest centers. Each party could thwart the other on matters it thought to be of prime importance. But neither could govern. In the first instance, neither could govern alone. The tsar could not, for he needed his bu­ reaucracy not only to carry out his policies, but even to formulate them. Finally, in the era of Alexander III, he needed the State Coun­ cil in its role as the organ of tsarist legality: Russia was not to be a tyr­ anny, ruled by executive fiat through the ministries, but an orderly autocratic state fixed on a foundation of law and legal process. But if this was the case, and if, as we have seen, the Council had the 201

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power to thwart the autocrat and his most powerful ministers on mat­ ters of legislation to which they were firmly committed, then the ques­ tion remains of why it was unable to move beyond a negative role as a debating society to assume more affirmative powers. The answer is to be found at least in part in its composition. The Council did not and could not assume such functions because the Council had no author­ ity apart from its reflected authority as an organ of the autocrat, and since it neither represented nor was tied to any group in society apart from the bureaucracy from which it had sprung, there existed no power base on which it could construct its own authority. This analy­ sis, if correct, helps to explain the paradoxical situation in which the State Council found itself toward the end of the last century: under a strong-willed tsar with a positive program of counter-reform to which he was fully committed and for which he was willing to expend his best efforts, the Council proved itself a strong, resilient, and sur­ prisingly effective force. Yet in the succeeding era, under a weak tsar with no program, the State Council dwindled away to become the pensioners’ home its critics had long called it. The tragic irony in this for Russia is that when the tsar proved un­ able to govern, no other part of his administration was any more able. The autocracy was indeed a whole: the tsar could not govern alone, but neither could any part of his administration govern without him. And this came about not because that administration was compro­ mised by its ties to the interests of an outside group, but because it was tied to no outside interests at all and therefore could neither claim nor count on support from any group beyond itself. That the tsar could not govern alone was a factor independent of his individual character or circumstances: he was dependent upon the institutional exercise of authority. And that institutional exercise as it developed in a struc­ tured bureaucratic framework frightened Alexander III, who saw in it a threat to autocratic power. As we have seen, in the circumstances of Alexander’s reign, the threat seemed genuine, for the institutional nature of the higher bureaucracy did in crucial respects serve as a check on the untrammeled exercise of autocratic authority in some of the very areas where it should have been in theory most effectively exercised. The irony is found in the circumstance that the apparent threat of the existence of an institutional power base apart from the autocracy proved ephemeral at the very moment when the nation could most have used just such an institution. It seems that, for all the energy the tsar and his higher administration were able to invest in sometimes 202

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furious conflict with each other, the two were locked inseparably in a dance in which neither could assert effective power. The Council proved strong enough to thwart the tsar on issues it saw as central to its self-interest. But the extent of that self-interest was narrow enough to ensure the increasing paralysis of effective administrative function­ ing in the last years of the century. The result was no mere crisis of regime, but of the system of government itself, and the problem of finding an institutional base that could accommodate comfortably both an autocratic system and a rationalized structured bureaucracy was not to find its solution under the old regime.

N otes Bibliography Index

Notes Introduction 1. Cited in Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. 146. 2. My understanding o f the concept o f Polizeistaat and the evolution o f au­ tocracy in general owes much to Theodore Taranovski s interesting and informative discussion, “The Politics o f Counter-Reform.” See also Rich­ ard S. Wortman, The Development of A Russian Legal Consciousness, pp. 9 - 50. 3. A. J. Rieber, ed., The Politics of Autocracy, p. 55. 4. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, PraviteVstvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIXv, p. 221.

Chapter 1 1. la. K. Grot, Imperator Aleksandr III v otnosheniiakh k nastavniku iunosti, P- 2 -

2. V. P. Obninskii, Poslednii samoderzhets, p. 72; cf. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia na rubezhe XIX-XX stoletii, pp. 3 9 —40; Charles Lowe, Alexander III of Russia, p. 305. 3. Igor Vinogradoff, ed., “Some Russian Imperial Letters to Prince V. P. Meshchersky (1839—1914),” p. 106; V. S. Frank, ed., “Iz neizdannoi perepiski imp. Aleksandra III i Nikolaia II s kn. V. P. Meshcherskim,” p. 169; K. K. Korol’kov, Zhizn’ i tsarsivovanie Imperatora Aleksandra III ( 1 8 8 1 —1 8 9 4 gg.), pp. 17, 19; Imperator Aleksandr III, pp. 209—210; Julius Eckhardt, Aus der Petersburger Gesellschaft, pp. 67, 346; Lowe, Alexander III, p. 14; E. A. Peretts, Dnevnik E. A. Perettsa ( 1 8 8 0 —1 8 8 3 ), P- I 5°4. Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” pp. 113, 145; Frank, “Iz perepiski,” pp. 175, 179, 182. 5. S. Witte, Vospominaniia, 1:383, 406; see also E. M. Feoktistov, Vospominaniia. Za kulisami politiki i literatury 1848—1896, 1: 216—217, 206; lu. V. Got’e, “Pobedonostsev and Alexander III,” pp. 3 4 —36; P. A. Valuev, Dnevnik P. A. Valuev, ministra vnutrennikh del, 1 :40. 6. A. V. Bogdanovich, Tri poslednikh samoderzhtsa: dnevnik A. V. Bogdanovich, p. 93. Pobedonostsev wrote some letters that contained unfavorable com207

N otes to P ages 1 8 -2 2

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

parisons o f the two brothers. In 1889 some o f these were supposedly found in Admiral I. A. Shestakov’s papers, which were put in order by A. A. Polovtsov, state secretary o f the Council, though Polovtsov himself does not mention finding the letters. (Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretaria A. A. Polovtsova, 2:142 —143. Polovtsov may, however, have shown these letters to Alexander III, which would be another reason for Pobedonostsev’s falling influence at that time. See A. F. Koni, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:269. A. A. Kireev, who was close to court circles, in his diary o f 1889 quoted Pobedonostsev as having characterized Alexander III in one o f these letters as “limited, coarse, and uneducated.” ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, list 161. Valuev, Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, 1:40; Lowe, Alexander III, p. 16. N. N. Firsov, “Aleksandr III, Kharakteristika,” p. 94; P. A. Zaionchkovskii in his discussion o f the personality and environment o f Alexander III, has underrated, in my opinion, Alexander’s intellect and ability to gov­ ern. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIX stoletiia, pp. 3 8 —81; see also idem, “Aleksandr III i ego blizhaishchee okruzhenie.” Peretts, Dnevnik, pp. 105, 107; Polovtsov, Dnevnik, 1:21; D. A. Miliutin, Dnevnik D. A. Miliutina, 4 :5 1 , 56. N. Flerovskii [V. V. Bervi], Tri politicheskie sistemy, p. 537; H. L. von Schweinitz, Briefwechsel des Botschafters General H. L. von Schweinitz, pp. 167, 183; Firsov, “Aleksandr,” p. 107; V. P. Bezobrov, “Iz dnevnika Senatora V. P. Bezobrova,” p. 28. See, for example, Nikolai Romanov, “Iz perepiski Nikolaia Romanova s V. A. Romanovym”; L. G. Zakharova, “Krizis samoderzhaviia nakanune revoliutsii 1905 g.” Alexander III regulated the status o f the numerous Romanov family, replacing the old law o f 1797 on the imperial family with a new one which lowered the status and appanages o f all Romanovs except the immediate descendants o f the ruling emperor. PSZRI, 3rd ser., 6 (1885), no. 3851. T------ , “Iz dnevnikov i zapisnoi knizhki Aleksandra III.” Kireev has re­ corded the displeasure Alexander’s Copenhagen trips aroused in highest governmental circles in 1891 and 1892. ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, listy 241, 243, 248, 252, 264, and passim. F. G. Terner, Vospominaniia zhizni F. G. Ternera, 1:245. As a young econo­ mist Terner had been involved in the preparation o f the zemstvo reform. V. N. Lamzdorf, Dnevnik, 1891 —1892, p. 342; see also lu. B. Solov’ev, Samoderzhavie i dvorianstvo v kontse XIX veka, p. 76; Terner, Vospominaniia, 245; H. L. von Schweinitz, Denkwürdigkeiten des Botschafters H. L. von Schweinitz, 2:370. Imperator, p. 612; Lowe, Alexander III, p. 316. For examples see Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” pp. 108, 110, 117, 118, and passim; Feoktistov, Vospominaniia, 2:257; Hermann von SamsonHimmelstjerna, Russia under Alexander III and in the Preceding Period, p. 19; Edward Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace, p. 274. Crankshaw’s discussion o f Alexander’s personality is insightful. Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” p. 112. Igor Vinogradoff, “Further Russian Imperial Correspondence with

208

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19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

Prince V. P. Meshchersky,” p. 107; see also A. A. Polovtsov, “Iz dnevnika A. A. Polovtsova (187 7 -1 8 7 8 ),” p. 187. Valuev, Dnevnik P A. Valueva, 1:181; V. P. Meshcherskii, Moi vospominaniia, 2 :5 0 4 —506; Schweinitz, Briefwechsel, p. 384; see as examples Alexander’s letters in 1867 to Pobedonostsev in Pobedonostsev, K. P. Pobedonostsev i ego korrespondenty. Pis’ma i zapiski, 2 :988, 994, 999; also Pobedonostsev’s letters to Anna Tiutcheva in 1867 in Got’e, “Pobedonostsev,” pp. 35 and 42. Alexander acknowledged his mother’s lack o f love in a letter to his wife o f October 7, 1874, in which he justified his decision to accom­ pany his mother to her Darmstadt home, leaving Mariia Fëdorovna be­ hind in England. He wrote that his mother thanked him and embraced him as soon as her husband and other sons left the boat, and then he stated: “I understand very well that it was not exactly me whom she was content to see with her but at least some one o f her sons.” A year later, in a letter o f August 3, 1875, to his wife, he complained about his father’s lack o f attention to him while they were on maneuvers near Gatchina, exclud­ ing him even from deer hunting “which I love very much.” Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen, Handskriftsamlingen XVI Proveniensordnet del Rusland Staatsarkiver i Moskva 29. Miliutin, Dnevnik, 3:265, 275, 278; Pobedonostsev, Zapiski, 2:1016; Meschcherskii, Vospominaniia, 1:435. One o f Alexander’s first acts as ruler was to dismiss anyone favorable to the Princess Yurevskaia. One reason for the cooling relationship o f Alexander and Minister o f Interior LorisMelikov in 1881 was Loris’s patronage o f the princess. Loris may also have attempted, unsuccessfully, to reconcile the imperial families. “Perepiska Aleksandra III s gr. M. T. Loris-Melikovym (1880-1881 gg.), pp. 124—125; E. N. Narishkin-Kurakin, Unter drei Zaren, p. 103. The marquis o f Dufferin, British ambassador to the Romanov court, reported on one such attempt to Foreign Secretary Lord Granville in a letter o f March 24, 1881, assessing the state o f the government after the assassination. He wrote that Loris-Melikov’s prestige had suffered a blow. “It is certain moreover that the Empress does not like him. He was a great partisan o f the Princess Yurrieffsky’s and the chief instrument in forming a recon­ ciliation between her and the rest o f the Imperial Family; and in the Crimea a disagreeable scene took place between the present Empress and him.” Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, with the gracious permission o f Her Majesty the Queen, Victorian Archive, RA H 43/84. Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” p. 111; Frank, “Iz perepiski,” p. 181. Lowe, Alexander III, pp. 26, 40; Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” p. 111. Vinogradoff, “Further Correspondence,” pp. 108-109; Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” pp. 106, 108, 118, and passim. Polovtsov, Dnevnik, 2:148 and passim; Miliutin, Dnevnik, 4:28; N. N. Firsov, “Pobedonostsev. Opyt kharakteristika po pis’mam,” p. 258. Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” pp. 108, 117, 118—119. Reutern, for exam­ ple, composed a secret memorandum for Alexander II in October 1876, opposing a declaration o f war on Turkey because it would spell the coun­ try’s financial ruin. This advice earned Reutern the epithet “pagan Ger­ man” from Alexander, then tsesarevich and a participant in the war dis209

N

25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

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P ages

24-30

eussions. Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen, Handskriftsamlingen, Alexander III to Mariia Fedorovna, October 3, 1876. E. Sablin, “The Empress Maria Feodorovna. Obituary,” p. 413. See Alexander’s approving comments on governors’ reports regarding russification activities. Svod Vysochaishikh otmetok po vsepoddaneishim otchetamza 1 8 8 1 -1 8 9 0 gg., pp. 3 - 5 3 , 80—92, 2 2 4 -2 4 9 , 496, and passim. Rus­ sification was also supported by the growing bureaucratic apparatus for the sake o f “administrative efficiency.” Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” pp. 110, 118; Frank, “Iz perepiski,” pp. 184—185. S. M. Seredonin et al., Istoricheskii obzor deiatel'nosti Komiteta ministrov i dopolnenie k l i l l tomam, 4:23; P. A. Valuev, Dnevnik 1877—1884, p. 18. Polovtsov, Dnevnik, 2:276, 308; Witte, Vospominaniia, 1:40, 429; 2:228. See also Alexander’s remarks on his governors’ reports concerning the status o f Jews in the empire. Svod Vysochaishikh, pp. 180—195. Polovtsov, Dnevnik, 1:404, also 1:438, 447, 464, 2:238, 249; idem, “Iz dnevnika A. A. Polovtsova (1894), p. 170. Imperial Russia is described by Pipes, for instance, as one o f the category o f patrimonial states in which “separation between authority exercised as sovereignty and authority exercised as ownership . . . occurred very late and imperfectly.” Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, pp. xxii, 54. Rieber, The Politics of Autocracy, pp. 55, 94 —95. Witte, Vospominaniia, 1:414—415, 407. In order o f quotation: Valuev, Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, l : 181; Pobedonostsev, Zapiski, 1 :4g; Firsov, “Aleksandr,” p. 105; TsGAOR, fond 583, opis’ 1, delo 47, list 57. Nicholas II echoed his predecessors. Das Tagebuch des letzten Zaren von 1890 bis zum Fall, p. 214. The term “bureaucracy” is used throughout this study in the descriptive sense as “government by departments o f the state staffed by appointed and not elected functionaries, organized hierarchically and dependent on a sovereign authority.” Michael Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, p. 1; see his discussion o f the term on pp. 1—9, 145—203; and Orlovsky’s re­ view o f the problems o f definition in Daniel T. Orlovsky, “Recent Studies on the Russian Bureaucracy,” pp. 452—454. There are two other mean­ ings o f the term: as a pejorative, primarily in association with dysfunc­ tions and a third, normative meaning, the ideal rational type o f Weber. The Weberian bureaucracy “expresses the rationalization o f collective ac­ tivity and is associated with the appearance o f capitalism.” Its officials have an “ethos o f service to society, political disinterestedness, and effi­ ciency. T he organizations themselves are marked by the proliferation o f impersonal rules, hierarchy (monocracy), rational division o f labor, and discipline.” Orlovsky, “Recent Studies,” p. 453; see also Max Weber, “Bu­ reaucracy,” in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and ed., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. The Weberian type derived from the Prussian experience and made all other bureaucracies appear deficient. See RaefFs claim that Russia had therefore no “hom ogeneous, efficient, alert and po­ litically conscious policy making bureaucracy,” and thus lacked a “true” bureaucracy. Marc Raeff, “The Russian Autocracy and Its Officials.” Cited in Solov’ev, Samoderzhavie i dvorianstvo, p. 67; on the growth o f the 210

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bureaucracy, see Frederick Starr’s discussion in D e c e n tr a liz a tio n a n d S e lfpp. 9 —14. See for example, W. Bruce Lincoln, “The Genesis o f an ‘Enlightened’ Bu­ reaucracy in Russia, 1825—1856”; A. J. Rieber, “The Formation o f La Grande Société des Chemins de Fer Russes”; Walter Pintner, “The Rus­ sian Higher Civil Service on the Eve o f the Great Reforms.” D. M. Wallace, R u s s ia o n th e E v e o f W a r a n d R e v o lu tio n , p. 11. The term “liberal” is misleading since liberal or liberalism as used in nine­ teenth-century Western Europe with its emphasis on parliamentary gov­ ernment, libertarian values, and laissez faire economics is hardly applica­ ble to Russia in mid-nineteenth century; the inapplicability o f the West European usage o f that period to Russian reformist officials becomes clearer when one considers that the most distinguishing feature o f these officials was their statist orientation and their belief in the progressive re­ forming potential o f the autocracy as the guardian o f the nation’s welfare and unity. As K. D. Kavelin wrote to T. N. Granovskii in 1857: “I believe in the complete necessity o f absolutism for contemporary Russia, but it should be progressive and enlightened.” “Pis’ma K. D. Kavelina k T. N. Granovskomu,” p. 596; Daniel Field, “Kavelin and Russian Liberalism,” pp. 59, 60. There was, however, among the reformers an admixture o f liberalism characterized by the R e c h ts s ta a t conception o f government with an associated stress on an independent judiciary and civil rights; this was seen as a threat to unlimited autocracy and earned the various types o f reformist officials the suspicion and hostility o f the autocracy. (Chapter 4 is devoted to a discussion o f the reformist officials.) P. A. Zaionchkovskii, K r iz is s a m o d e r z h a v iia n a ru b e zh e 1 8 7 0 — i 8 8 o k h g o d o v , PP- 393—394, 396; H.-J. Torke, D a s ru ssisch e B e a m te n tu m in d e r erste n H a e lf te d es i g . J a h r h u n d e r ts , p. 309. ORGBL, fond 126 karton 11, list 332. On September 30,1876, Alexander wrote a letter to his wife, also meant for the eyes o f Pobedonostsev, in which he condemned the bureaucracy on the eve o f the Russo-Turkish War. Both tone and content show Alexander at his most typical. “It nause­ ates me to think o f where we are and what kind o f small and poor person­ alities are at the head o f our government. You can’t find even one man in the administration who shows the slightest sign o f statesmanship. Nobody at all, and this you just discover under these difficult circumstances such as the present. The whole rabble, they are just officials who think o f their own bellies and nothing else instead o f the ministries o f the Russian Em­ pire. Papa does not have one decent man who will tell him the truth and will be his staunch adviser, who knows and loves Russia and is a true Rus­ sian man who serves his emperor and his fatherland out o f conviction and not for pay. I alone can’t do anything and can’t say anything because Papa does not trust me.” Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen, Handskriftsamlingen. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:27. Ibid., 1:26. Ibid., 2:363, 19. Ibid., 1:424, 2:179. Ibid., 2:228, 362—363, 1:323, 424, and passim; for other representative samples o f Alexander’s reaction to constitutionalism, see A. S. Suvorin,

G o v e r n m e n t in R u s s ia , 1 8 3 0 — 1 8 7 0 ,

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38. 39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

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p. 166; V. N. Lamzdorf, D n e v n ik . 1 8 8 6 — 1 8 9 0 , p. 159. Not even in 1905—1906 did the autocracy use the word “constitu­ tion,” but persisted in referring to the new constitution by its traditional term, “fundamental laws o f the empire,” used in 1832. 47. Zaionchkovskii, K r iz is , pp. 137—144, 288—295; consult also Hans Heilbronner, “Alexander III and the Reform Plan o f Loris-Melikov.” Minor changes in the legislative procedure had also been advocated by Minister o f Interior P. A. Valuev in 1863 and by Grand Duke Konstantin; these plans were again brought up in the crisis o f 1 8 80-1881. See K. L. Bermanskii, “Konstitutsionnye prozhekty tsarstvovaniia Aleksandra II,” pp. 225—233. Konstantin’s reform plan is outlined in Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1163, and L. G. Zakharova provides a convenient survey o f all these plans in Z e m s k a ia k o n tr r e fo r m a 1 8 9 0 g ., pp. 4 4 —71. Valuev cites Alexander’s nega­ tive comments on all these plans, D n e v n ik i 8 j j , pp. 47, 51, 113—114, 178. Alexander’s fears o f constitutional strivings in general were reinforced during his own rule by the action o f his minister o f interior, Count N. P. Ignat’ev, who in 1882 proposed the convocation o f a ze m sk ii so b o r (a medi­ eval Russian institution), a consultative assembly with representatives o f various social estates, including the peasantry. This assembly was to con­ vene for the first time during Alexander’s coronation in 1883. Ignat’ev was dismissed from his post. 48. Koni, S o b r a n ie S o c h in e n ii, 2:295. D n e v n ik A . S . S u v o r in a ,

Chapter 2 1. The most immediate predecessor o f the State Council was the Permanent Council (n e p r e m e n n y i so v e t), created in 1801 and then renamed State Coun­ cil. Erik Amburger, G esch ich te d e r B e h o e r d e n o r g a n is a tio n R u s s la n d s v o n P e te r d e m G ro sse n bis 1 9 1 7 , pp. 6 2 —65; V. G. Shcheglov, G o s u d a r s tv e n n y i s o v e t v R o s s ii v o so b e n n o sti v ts a r s tv o v a n ie A le k s a n d r a I , pp. 785—815; Marc Raeff, M ic h a e l S p e ra n sk y . S ta te s m a n o f I m p e r ia l R u s s ia , p. 151. 2. Raeff, S p e ra n sk y , pp. 119—169; Marc Raeff, ed., P la n s f o r P o litic a l R e fo r m in I m p e r ia l R u s s ia , i j y o — 1 9 0 5 , pp. 92—109; Richard Pipes, trans. and ed., K a r a m z i n ’s M e m o ir o n A n c ie n t a n d M o d e r n R u s s ia , p. 229. 3. N. M. Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :7 0 —72. 4. G o s u d a r s tv e n n y i so v e t. 1 8 0 1 — 1 9 0 1 , p. 19, cited in Bruce Lincoln, “The Com­ position o f the Imperial Russian State Council under Nicholas I,” p. 369. 5. George L. Yaney, T h e S y s te m a tiz a tio n o f R u s s ia n G o v e r n m e n t, pp. 249—254; Witte, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:433—435. 6. V. I. Gurko, F ea tu res a n d F ig u r e s o f th e P a s t, pp. 29—30; Yaney, S y s te m a tiz a ­ tio n , pp. 265—267. See Lazarevskii’s interesting analysis o f ministerial de­ velopment in the nineteenth century. He noted that the growth o f a more complex administration made ministries into “technical establishments” with their own jurisdictional viewpoints and professional loyalties which hardened over the decades and were stubbornly defended; ministers in­ creasingly came to depend on the expertise o f their personnel. In addi212

N otes to P ages 4 1 -4 2 tion, the last two Romanov tsars, Alexander III and Nicholas II, ap­ pointed career bureaucrats rather than personal friends to ministerial positions. This policy also contributed to the increasing isolation o f minis­ ters within their own domains, and was indicative not only o f the profes­ sionalization o f the bureaucracy, but also o f the tsars’ removal from Rus­ sian society— Nicholas II often hardly knew the men he appointed as ministers. D a s T a g eb u ch , p. 222. In the absence o f an effective superordi­ nate coordinating council, the operations o f government became ever more dependent on individual ministers being able to work out agree­ ments with one another, especially in regard to legislative proposals in­ tended for the State Council. Foremost among the devices ministers used to achieve some sort o f agreement before a project went to the Council itself was the practice o f sending out legislative proposals to other minis­ tries for commentary (z a k liu c h e n iia ). From 1872 these proposals were for­ mally printed up for such distribution. The comments solicited could be anything from the very general to the specific, and though they carried no legal force, negative comments from another ministry served as a strong incentive to rewrite a proposal in order to forestall opposition in the State Council from that ministry and its allies. If no agreement was secured, then the Council itself became by default the arena for the con­ ciliation among ministries. Another informal rule and tradition o f interministerial relations was that a minister not go to the tsar behind his colleagues’ back to appeal for intervention on a pending or current pro­ posal; anyone who did so provoked strong reactions from other minis­ ters, who quite rightly saw direct tsarist intervention o f this sort as a threat to their authority and effectiveness. Nonetheless, given the stakes some­ times involved, ministers made such appeals, and during the rule o f Alex­ ander III they had the tacit encouragement o f the tsar to do so. The main vehicle in such attempts was the minister’s personal report ( v s e p o d d a n n e ish ii d o k la d ) to the tsar, while the main lever used by the tsar to exert his influence in response to such an appeal was his legal right to approve a Council minority recommendation. (On the two occasions, in fact, that Alexander III approved the minority recommendation o f a single Coun­ cil member that recommendation came from a minister.) N. I. Lazarevskii, L e k ts ii p o ru ssk o m u g o s u d a r s tv e n n o m u p r a v u , 2 :1 7 7 —180. Tsarist en­ couragement o f ministerial reports and requests for intervention on proposals pending in the State Council were violations o f Council proce­ dure, since two supreme commands o f 1875 and a similar one o f 1881, issued by Alexander III, specifically forbade such ministerial action. G os. s o v e t, pp. 124, 184. 7. PSZRI, istser., 31 (1810—1811), no. 24064. 8. The double position o f ministers is reflected in the institutional develop­ ment o f the Council. Originally, the presence o f ministers at Council ses­ sions was not obligatory. According to M. N. Korkunov, this indicated a striving to separate the administrative from the legislative branch, since ministers were not to hinder the legislative work o f the Council by not appearing. Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :89. This led often, however, to misinformed decisions by the Council. By 1834 ministers were obliged to appear at all general sessions o f the Council irrespective 213

N otes to P ages 4 2 -4 7

9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

o f the subject under debate. This was difficult, though, and regulations o f 1847 and 1852 allowed ministers to send their assistants as representa­ tives; this ensured that debates in the General Assembly were not delayed and that the participation o f ministers did not become a formality. The presence o f ministers at departmental sessions was not obligatory, except for certain tax matters (ze m sk ie p o v in n o s ti) which required the presence o f the ministers o f Finance and Interior, the state comptroller, and the min­ ister o f imperial court in the Department o f Economy. Ministers could send their representatives to departmental sessions, participate them­ selves, or send positional statements. Department chairmen could also in­ vite ministers. In this case, though, ministers were regarded as represen­ tatives o f their ministries and not as members o f the Council, since they could not be members o f the departments. Ibid., p. 90; R. Maurach, D e r ru ssisch e R e ic h s r a t , pp. 161 —163. The section on the organization o f the Council is mainly based on PSZRI, ist ser. 31 (1810), no. 24064; PSZRI, 2d. ser., 17 (1842), no. 15518; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2:61 —118; A. D. Gradovskii, S o b r a n ie so c h in e n ii, 8 :2 1 4 —255; G os. so v e t; G o s u d a r s tv e n n a ia k a n ts e lia r iia , 1810—1910; Yaney, S y s te m a tiz a tio n , pp. 254—258; Amburger, B e h o e r d e n o r g a n is a tio n , pp. 6 5 —70. G os. s o v e t, p. 123. Members held the second and third ranks o f actual privy councillor and privy councillor or general and lieutenant general. TsGAOR, fond ggo, opis’ 1, delo 8, May 18, 1884, list 12. According to the report o f the president o f the State Council for the session o f October 3, 1892 to May 24, 1893, the departments were composed o f eighteen members and held 129 sessions (89 o f these in combined session). The Department o f Law had seven members and met 31 times (26 times in combined session) to deliberate 102 cases; the work load o f each member would be about 14 cases. The Department o f Civil and Religious Affairs was composed o f five members and held 28 sessions (24 combined ses­ sions) to deliberate 174 cases; the work load for each member would be almost 35 cases. T he Department o f Economy was composed o f six mem­ bers and held 70 sessions, 43 o f which were concerned with legislative matters, 27 with strictly budgetary affairs (39 combined sessions), to delib­ erate on 510 cases; the work load for each member was 85 cases. Sessions o f the General Assembly o f the Council were also few, 29 sessions to delib­ erate 110 cases. V se p o d d a n e ish c h ii otch et p r e d s e d a te l’ia G o s u d a r s tv e n n o g o so v e t a , 1 8 9 2 - 1893, pp. 5 —17. Gurko, F ea tu res a n d F ig u re s, pp. 37—48. A position in the Chancery was generally desirable because o f its closeness to the political center; in addi­ tion no regular hours were kept, and work was mainly done at home. The staff o f the State Chancery was about 115 in 1900. G os. k a n ts ., p. 416. V. M. Ustinov, “Nash zakonodatel’nyi put’,” p. 134; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :9 9 —100. Yaney, S y s te m a tiz a tio n , p. 258; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :253. Already in 1816, tsarist statesmen accused the Chancery o f exces­ sive influence over the affairs of the Council. Shcheglov, G os. s o v e t A le k s a n d r a I, p. 921. S v o d z a k o n o v ro ssiisk o i im p e rii, 1832, vol. 1, p. 1: "Osnovnye zakony i uchrezhdeniia gosudarstvennyia.” 214

N otes to P ages 4 8 -5 5 15. For an interesting discussion o f the contradictions contained in the fun­ damental laws, see Marc Szeftel, “The Form o f the Russian Empire prior to the Constitutional Reforms o f 1905-19 0 6 ,” pp. 106—107; consult also M. Andreeva, “Samoderzhavie i zakonnost’,” pp. 142 —144. 16. Yaney’s analysis o f the complex question o f legality is perceptive and thoughtful; this presentation leans on his discussion. See Yaney, S y s te m a ti­ z a tio n , pp. 265—281 ; also Wortman, R u s s ia n L e g a l C o n sc io u sn e ss, pp. 9 —18. 17. For a discussion o f this question see N. M. Korkunov, U k a z i z a k o n ; also B. M. Kochakov, “Gosudarstvennyi sovet i ego arkhivnye materialy,” pp. 8 1 -8 6 . 18. Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :7 8 —79, discusses the history o f the formula in some detail; Pipes, K a r a m z in ’s M e m o ir , p. 152. 19. A. S. Alekseev, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , p. 261. 20. Marc Raeff, “Imperial Russia: Peter I to Nicholas I,” 1:130. 21. The general survey o f the evolution o f the State Council is based mainly on Gradovskii, S o b r a n ie so c h in e n ii, vol. 8; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n ­ n o e p r a v o , vol. 2; Maurach, D e r R e ic h sra t; M. N. Kovalevskii, O c h e r k ip o istor ii g o su d a r s tv e n n y k h u c h re zh d e n ii d o r e v o liu ts io n n o i R o s s ii ; V. G. Shcheglov, G o s u d a r s tv e n n y i s o v e t v R o s s ii v p e r v y i v e k eg o o b r a z o v a n iia ( 3 0 M a r t a 1 8 0 1 — 1 9 0 1 g o d a ) \ Danevskii, I s to r iia G o s u d a r s tv e n n o g o s o v e ta v R o ssii; G os. s o v e t.; G o s. k a n ts.; Lazarevskii, L e k tsii.

22. 23. 24. 25.

Raeff, S p e ra n sk y , p. 116. Yaney, S y s te m a tiz a tio n , p. 194. Ibid., p. 196; Shcheglov, G os. s o v e t v v e k , p. 47. M. A. Korf, “Iz zapisok barona M. A. Korfa,” p. 280; Victor Leontovitsch, G esch ich te d es L ib e r a lis m u s in R u s s la n d , pp. 5 9 —63; cf. A. A. Kizevetter, Isto rich esk ie och erki. On another occasion Nicholas I said: “The Council exists, in my understanding, in order conscientiously to express to me its convic­ tions on those questions which I ask o f it; no more, no less.” TsGAOR, fond 728, opis’ 1, delo 1817, list 140. 26. N. P. Eroshkin, O c h e rk i is to rii g o s u d a r s tv e n n y k h u c h re zh d e n ii d o r e v o liu ts io n n o i R o s s ii, pp. 185, 251; for examples see A. E. Presniakov, A p o g e i sa m o d e rzh a v iia , p. 45; Shcheglov, G os. s o v e t v v e k , pp. 9 6 —99; M. Polievktov, N ik o la i I; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :8 5 —88. The official history o f the Committee o f Ministers provides a good picture o f Nicholas’s activism and his detailed instructions on projects. In his resolutions “one can find not only acceptance, rejections, or changes, but also how to decide pro­ jects and cases.” Seredonin et al., Isto ric h e sk ii o b zo r, vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 3. 27. The new code went into effect in 1835, replacing the old code o f Mus­ covite Russia, the U lo zh e n ie o f 1649. During the work on this new code a body o f trained jurists was brought into being, who were to play a role in the further development o f the legal system. Though the codification commission was detached, characteristically, from the State Council, the Council did nevertheless participate in the final deliberations. Wortman, R u s s ia n L e g a l C o n sc io u sn e ss, pp. 16—17, 158—159, and passim. On the Nicholas system, see the recent reappraisal o f W. B. Lincoln, N ic h o la s I E m p e r o r a n d A u to c r a t o f A l l th e R u s s ia s , pp. 75—103. 28. G o s. s o v e t, p. 89. 29. The literature for the reform period is voluminous, and includes N. V. 215

N otes to P ages 5 7 -6 3 Davydov and N. N. Polianskii, eds., S u d e b n a ia r e f o r m a ; G. A. Dzhanshiev, I. V. Gessen, S u d e b n a ia r e f o r m a ; see also G os. s o v e t, pp. 87—115; G os. k a n ts ., pp. 188—242. This marks the most active and ex­ citing legislative period in the Council’s history; any subsequent work ap­ peared to many educated Russians in public and private life as anticlimactic and pale by comparison. This attitude is reflected in the official history o f the institution, which records this period as the Council’s golden age and has little to say on the Council under Alexander III. G os. s o v e t, p. 121. 30. Yaney, S y s te m a tiz a tio n , p. 270; the Council’s official history and other sources cite only two occasions, both concerned with D. A. Tolstoi’s educa­ tion reforms, on which Alexander II approved a minority opinion o f the Council during Konstantin’s tenure. G os. so v e t, pp. 118—119; K. Zhitkov, “Svetloi pamiati velikogo kniazia Konstantina Nikolaevicha general-admirala russkogo flota,” p. 49. E p o k h a v e lik ik h r e fo r m ;

Chapter 3 1. Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:222; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 11263; see Katkov’s letter o f 1884 to Alexander III about the deterioration o f his (Katkov’s) personal relations with Tolstoi. “Vozhd’ reaktsii 6 0 -8 0 gg. Pis’ma Katkova Aleksandru II i Aleksandru III,” p. 7. See also Zaionchkovskii, R o ssiisk o e , pp. 53—81; he was the first historian to note the role o f Meshcherskii. 2. Koni, S o b r a n ie so c h in e n ii, 2 :267; see the comparison o f Pobedonostsev to Cardinal Richelieu in F. Steinmann and E. Hurwicz, eds., K o n s ta n tin P e tro w itsc h P o b je d o n o sze w , p. 64; Robert Byrnes, P o b e d o n o stse v . H is L ife a n d T h o u g h t, p. 358. 3. Pobedonostsev, for example, was instrumental in the appointment o f Baron A. P. Nikolai as minister o f education (1881 —1882) and Count D. A. Tolstoi as minister o f interior. Steinmann and Hurwicz, P o b je d o n o ­ s z e w , p. 271. K. P. Pobedonostsev, P i s ’m a P o b e d o n o stse v a k A le k s a n d r u III, 1:386. Feoktistov was astonished at the energy Pobedonostsev displayed in press affairs. Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:221. Alexander III valued Pobedonostsev’s editorial ability throughout his rule, and often asked him to write official rescripts. Pobedonostsev, P i s ’m a , 2 :900; Polovstsov, D n e v ­ n ik , 1 :476, 2:112; K. P. Pobedonostsev, “Pervye nedeli tsarstvovaniia,” p. 974. On Pobedonostsev’s role during the discussion o f the university and judi­ ciary reforms, as well as the land captain and zemstvo reforms in the 1880s, see H. Whelan, “Alexander III and the State Council: The Politics o f Equilibrium,” pp. 220—334; on Pobedonostsev’s proposed reform o f the judiciary, see Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i, 2:508. 5. Koni, S o b r a n ie so c h in e n ii, 2:310. 6. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1 :6o and passim. 7. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 71. 8. Cited in Edward Thaden, C o n s e r v a tiv e N a tio n a lis m in N in e te e n th - C e n tu r y 216

N otes to P ages 6 3 - 6 9 p. 202. Byrnes discusses Pobedonostsev’s political ideas in his arti­ cle “Pobedonostsev on the Instruments o f Russian Government.” Koni, S o b r a n ie so c h in e n ii, 2 :299; for similar comments on the Council, see Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:220—221; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik 2:154. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1: 208, 2:19. Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i, 2 :6 4 6 —647; see also Pobedonostsev, P is 'm a , 1: 399; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1 :443, 2:417 and passim; Byrnes, P o b e d o n o stse v , P- 73Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2:19. Witte, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:369. Allen Sinel, T h e C la ssro o m a n d the C h a n c e lle ry , p. 52. Ibid., pp. 38—53. Sinel provides as much o f the limited biographical data on Tolstoi as is known. TsGAOR, fond 728, delo 2903, list 13. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 61, delo 36. B. N. Chicherin, V o sp o m in a n iia B. N . C h ic h e rin a “M o s k o v s k ii U n iv e r s ite t,” pp. 192 —193; also Schweinitz, D e n k w ü r d ig k e ite n , 2:199. Miliutin, D n e v n ik , 4:141. Sinel, T h e C la ssro o m . See, for example, Zaionchkovskii, R o ssiisk o e , pp. 1 4 8 -2 3 3 and passim. See Tolstoi’s statement on the role o f the gentry as state servitors in his legislative proposal on the land captains. TsGIAL, fond 1149, opis’ 11, delo 44, list 14; also Yaney, S y s te m a tiz a tio n , p. 375. “Perepiska Aleksandra III,” p. 108; Meshcherskii, V o sp o m in a n iia , 3:13; K. Golovin, M o i v o s p o m in a n iia , 2:53; A. Flourens, A le x a n d r e I I I , p. 122; Lamzdorf, D n e v n ik 1 8 8 6 , p. 195; Zaionchkovskii, K r iz is , pp. 213—215. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 61, delo 39, August 8 —11, 1883; Schweinitz also reported on this conversation, D e n k w ü r d ig k e ite n , 2 :200; see also Ju­ dith C. Zacek, “Champion o f the Past: Count D. A. Tolstoi as Minister o f the Interior, 1882-1889,” pp. 4 1 4 -4 1 5 . Valuev, D n e v n ik i 8 j y , p. 208. Feoktistov in particular charged Tolstoi with cowardice. Feoktistov, Vospo­ m in a n iia , 1:217. On Tolstoi and the educational reforms o f the 1870s, see Sinel, T h e C la ssro o m , pp. 142 —143; on Tolstoi and the 1880s, see Whelan, “Alexander III,” pp. 255—318. Whelan, “Alexander III.” There was one notable exception to Tolstoi’s usual ineffectiveness in organizing support for his projects in the admin­ istration. Tolstoi as minister o f interior assumed the leadership in the de­ fense o f the university project o f 1884, which was originally formulated when he was minister o f education and was then submitted and with­ drawn from the Council in 1880 and again introduced into the Council in 1882 under Minister o f Education I. Delianov, Tolstoi’s longtime as­ sistant. Tolstoi displayed exceptional energy in organizing a Council party in the project’s defense. Even though he managed to marshal only a mi­ nority, because o f his efforts, its members were at least united. Tolstoi never again displayed such energy, effort, and ability, and not only be­ cause o f his deteriorating health in the later 1880s. His land captain proj­ ect, for example, also achieved only minority support in the Council, but

R u s s ia ,

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

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N otes to Pages 6 9 -7 5

28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

this minority was completely disunited. See Whelan, “Alexander III,” pp. 1 7 9 -2 2 5 on the university project controversy o f 1884 and pp. 255—318 on the land captain project o f 1889. Schweinitz, D e n k w u e r d ig k e ite n , 2 : 203. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2:141. This expression became popular with Pobedonostsev, who began to refer to himself as the last o f the Mohicans in the 1870s. Byrnes, P o b e d o n o stse v , p. 239. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :197, and passim. Golovin, V o sp o m in a n iia , 2:24. Katkov was kept informed on Council business by, among others, minis­ ters Delianov, M. N. Ostrovskii, T. I. Filippov, I. A. Vyshnegradskii, and A. D. Pazukhin, director o f the Chancery o f the Ministry o f Interior. See Katkov’s correspondence in ORGBL, fond 120, karton 19, papka 19; Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , xiii, 2:252; according to Feoktistov, Alex­ ander III was much more sympathetic to Katkov’s views than was Al­ exander II. M. N. Katkov, “Vozhd’ reaktsii 6 0 —80-kh godov,” letter o f February 1884, pp. 20—21; on Katkov’s last years see Martin Katz, M ik h a il N . K a tk o v . A P o litic a l B io g r a p h y 1 8 1 8 —i 8 8 y , pp. 165—177. Pobedonostsev, P i s ’m a , 1:150, 229; idem, Z a p is k i, 2:487, 793; Byrnes, P o b e d o n o stse v , p. 358. M. N. Katkov, S o b r a n ie p e r e v o d y k h s ta te i “M o sk o v sk ik h V edom ostei" z a 1 8 8 6 g ., pp. 2 3 8 -2 3 9 ; for another similar attack, see S o b r a n ie z a 1 8 8 4 g . , pp. 301—303. Attacks on the Council were interwoven with editorials on legis­ lative projects before the Council which appeared weekly, the day before debate in the Council. See for example the year 1883, when Katkov de­ fended the Tolstoi-Delianov university project against the majority o f the Council. S o b r a n ie z a 1 8 8 3 g ., nos. 200, 208, and passim. The circulation o f the Voice was 25,000 in the early 1880s, while Katkov’s had fallen to 6,000 after the 1860s. Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:240. Feoktistov finally shut down the Voice for Tolstoi in 1883. The M e s s e n g e r o f E u r o p e , another liberal paper, then became the special target o f the reac­ tionary press. Zaionchkovskii, R o ssiisk o e , p. 285. In order o f citation, Katkov, S o b r a n ie za 1 8 8 4 g ., no. 105, p. 211; idem, S o b r a n ie za 1 8 8 3 g ., pp. 67—69. G o s. k a n ts ., p. 338; Miliutin, D n e v n ik , 4:124; Golovin, V o sp o m in a n iia , 2: 129; Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:116; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:323. In a let­ ter to Alexander III in 1884, Katkov himself commented on such rumors and denied any wish to become a member. “Vozhd’ reaktsii,” pp. 20, 24. Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i, 2 :7 9 3 —794; Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:323. Katkov’s paper received three official warnings or penalties after his death whereas Meshcherskii’s paper received seven during Alexander’s rule. V. Rosenberg and V. Iakushkin, R u s s k a ia p e c h a t' i tse n su ra v p ro sh lo m i n a sto ia sh c h e m , pp. 199, 205. Katkov lost Alexander’s favor only shortly be­ fore his death in 1887, when he began to comment on foreign policy, an area that Alexander jealously guarded for himself. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :35, 41, 44—45; Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 2:252 —255. See Vinogradoff, “Some Letters” and “Further Correspondence” for the

218

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41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Meshcherskii and Alexander III relationship in the 1860s. For the period until 1889, see TsGAOR, fond 677, opis’ 1, delo 895; and opis’ 1, delo 89 7Feoktistov, V o sp o m in a n iia , 2:253; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2:139; Bogdanovitch, J o u r n a l, p. 162. A typical example o f Alexander’s involvement with the paper is seen in Meshcherskii’s request to the tsar in a letter in 1885 to protect him from prosecution by the minister o f justice because o f some articles he wrote against the judiciary; Alexander read all o f these before publication. TsGAOR, fond 677, opis’ 1, delo 895, list 323. For a typical Meshcherskii editorial against the judiciary, see G r a z h d a n in , no. 1, 1884, pp. 3 —5, also nos. 15, 16, and 22. Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i , 2:7 2 7 —733 and passim; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 : 139 TsGAOR, fond 677, delo 897, listy 35—40. Bogdanovich, T ri, p. 155; see also Lamzdorf, D n e v n ik 1 8 8 6 , p. 223. ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, listy 200, 275. Whelan, “Alexander III,” pp. 3 0 9 -3 1 2 . TsGAOR, fond 677, opis’ 1, delo 895, listy 3 2 5 -3 2 6 ; see also list 19. G r a z h d a n in , no. 94, pp. 2—5. K. K. Arsen’ev, Z a c h e tv e rt' v e k a ( 1 8 7 1 —1 8 9 4 ) , p. 451. Arsen’ev was a com­ mentator for the liberal M e s s e n g e r o f E u r o p e . TsGAOR, fond 677, opis’ 1, delo 895, list 343; delo 897, listy 6, 62, 64, 65, and passim. ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, list 180.

Chapter 412 1. Raeff, “Imperial Russia,” p. 152. 2. In Prussia the professional official had early developed a sense o f a state polity separable from the monarchy and o f the ethos o f service to it. Within the activist royal tradition o f Prussia, especially the tradition o f in­ novative reform, Prussian bureaucrats had confidence that reform was not only possible, but rewarded. They shared the expectation that a mea­ sure o f reform was essential to the interests o f the state itself. The section on reformist bureaucrats is based on a combination o f primary and sec­ ondary sources too voluminous to cite here. See, for example, the mem­ oirs, diaries, and letters o f statesmen or other figures o f the period (Go­ lovnin, D. A. Miliutin, Valuev, Meshcherskii, Koni, Kireev, and the like; also G os. s o v e t and G os. k a n ts .) For secondary literature see the work o f W. B. Lincoln, the historian o f the group o f enlightened bureaucrats: N . M iliu tin , A n E n lig h te n e d R u s s ia n B u r e a u c r a t o f th e 1 9 th C e n tu r y , “The Circle o f Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, 1847—1861”; and “The Gene­ sis o f an ‘Enlightened’ Bureaucracy.” See also the literature on the Great Reform period: Dzhanshiev, E p o k h a ; V. N. Rozental’, “Ideinye tsentry liberal’nogo dvizheniia v Rossii nakanune revoliutsionnoi situatsii: Peterburgskii kruzhok K. D. Kavelina v 1855—1857 gg.,” p. 67; Terence Em219

N otes to P ages 8 5 - 8 9

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

mons, T h e R u s s ia n L a n d e d G e n tr y a n d the P e a s a n t E m a n c ip a tio n o f i 8 6 i \ Allen Sinel, “The Socialization o f the Russian Bureaucratic Elite, 1811 — 19 17”; J. W. Kipp, “The Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and the Ep­ och o f the Great Reforms, 1855—1866,” pp. 2—20. Pintner has also shown that a more professional, that is “university trained career official,” pre­ dominated in the Russian higher civil service (ranks one through five) in the last years o f Nicholas I as a result o f expanded educational oppor­ tunities; this better trained body o f officials enabled the state to undertake the Great Reforms. Pintner, “The Russian Higher Civil Service,” p. 55. Whereas in Prussia the civil service required legal training, in Russia no one type o f specialized training was required: law and engineering both provided routes to a top administrative position. The English, in contrast, have always preferred a liberal arts Oxbridge education for their civil servants. Golovnin, Reutern, S. A. Greig, Baron A. P. Nikolai, P. I. Salomon (ap­ pointed to the Council in 1889) were all graduates o f the class o f 1839 o f the lycée at Tsarskoe Selo. See Chapter 7; for example, attempts o f reformist officials to seat A. D. Shumakher, who had participated in the emancipation preparations and was an important figure in the 1870 municipal reform discussions, and K. I. Domontovich, equally involved in the reform movement, failed. TsGAOR, fond 677, delo 895, list 334; Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 146, 148; Po­ lovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:370, 364, 375. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. ix; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:26. Golovnin sent detailed letters on these events to D. A. Miliutin who was residing in the Crimea in the 1880s. ORGBL, fond 169, kartons 61 and 62; see also M. S., “Aleksandr Vasil’evich Golovnin”; “Prazdnovanie XXXVIII godovshchinu osvobozhdeniia kresti’ian.” See the letters o f Golovnin and Mansurov, ORGBL, fond 169, karton 61, delo 40, December 13, 1883, TsGAOR, fond 990, opis’ 1, delo 7, August 25, 1883, list 3. In order, Miliutin, D n e v n ik , 4:35; Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 40. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 60. Otto Hintze, D e r B e a m te n s ta n d , p. 47; cf. Torke, D a s ru ssisch e B e a m te n tu m , p. 300; see also Carl J. Friedrich, “The Continental Tradition o f Training Administrators in Law and Jurisprudence.” Torke, D a s ru ssisch e B e a m te n tu m , pp. 290—304; Rudolf von Jhering, D e r Z w e c k im R e c h t, 1:344; also Emmons, R u s s ia n L a n d e d G e n tr y , p. 317; cf. S. N. Eisenstadt, T h e P o litic a l S ystem o f E m p ir e s , p. 213. John L. Keep, “Light and Shade in the History o f the Russian Administra­ tion,” p. 9; see also Torke’s answer to Keep, objecting to the use o f R e c h ts ­ s ta a t for eighteenth-century Russia. H.-J. Torke, “More Shade Than Light,” p. 10. The Petrine state was a P o liz e is ta a t or “regulated” state, r e g u lia r n o e g o s u d a r s tv o as the Soviet historian Syromiatnikov put it. B. I. Syromiatnikov, “R e g u lia r n o e ” g o s u d a r s tv o P e tr a P e r v o g o i eg o id e o lo g iia , pp.

13. Hans Rosenberg, B u r e a u c r a c y , A risto c ra c y a n d A u to c ra c y , p. 48. 14. Ibid., p. 46. Taranovski, “Politics,” pp. 26, 2 8 9 -2 9 1 , 6 3 2 -6 3 3 . Taranov220

N otes to P ages 8 9 -9 7

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

ski’s discussion o f the concept o f R e c h ts s ta a t and its literature is informa­ tive and interesting; he keeps within a dualistic framework o f liberal and conservative bureaucracy with very definite and coherent Weltan­ schauungen. I prefer a less dualistic framework that does not evoke no­ tions o f parliamentary politics; in addition, too much dualism obscures the important fact that within the bureaucracy many competing groups, each with its own professional and institutional loyalties, were emerging, resulting in fragmentation. See Leonard Krieger, T h e G e r m a n I d e a o f F reed o m , pp. 252 —261, for an analysis o f the development o f the R e c h ts s ta a t doctrine in Germany. In order o f citation: Miliutin, D n e v n ik , 4:44; Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 60; Dzhanshiev, E p o k h a , p. 687; Koni, O ttsy i d e ti su d e b n o i re fo rm y , pp. 181, 187, and passim; idem, “Velikii kniaz’ Konstantin Nikolaevich.” Raeff, P la n s f o r P o litic a l R e f o r m , p. 29; see Lincoln, N . M iliu tin , pp. 101 — 109, on the “bureaucratic approach” to reform. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 41. Szeftel, “The Form,” p. 118.

20. Leontovitsch,

G esch ich te,

p. 259.

21. See for example, ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, list 180; Meshcherskii, V o s p o m in a n iia , 3:253. 22. For some examples see Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 87—91, 142 —143, and pas­ sim; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:21, 2 6 -2 7 , 35, 44, 158, 351, 364, 3 6 9 -3 7 0 , 375, and passim, 2:189 and passim. 23. G o s. k a n ts ., p. 337; Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 143, 146, 148, 150; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:27, 89. 24. In order Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:28, see also 2:227; Witte, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:240. Abaza, for example, refrained from participation in the crucial final Council debates on the land captain project in 1889 because Tolstoi and others accused him o f leading the opposition to the Ministry o f Inte­ rior proposal. Whelan, “Alexander III,” pp. 297, 304, and passim on Abaza’s role. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 61, delo 43, November 23, 1884; delo 39. July 19, 1883 and passim; Polovtsov, 2:82, 86, 424. 25. Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i, 1:49. 26. Miliutin, D n e v n ik , 4 :7 0 , Alexander’s loose use o f the word “constitution” is perhaps characteristic o f a man who grew to maturity in the early 1860s when, as Starr has pointed out, thoughts o f constitutionalism embraced “a variety o f phenomena, including the judicial statutes.” Starr has iden­ tified at least four currents o f thought on constitutionalism and has pointed out the “extent to which provincial and regional concerns stood at the forefront o f Russian constitutionalism.” Starr, D e c e n tr a liz a tio n , p. 263. 27. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:26; Zaionchkovskii, R o ssiisk o e , p. 277. 28. “Aleksandr III o’sotsialisticheskoi zaraze’.” 29. Sinel, T h e C la ssro o m , pp. 112 —123. 30. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 61, delo 33, December 5, 1881. 31. In order, ibid., karton 61, delo 43; delo 41, March 1884. 32. TsGAOR, fond 990, opis’ 1, delo 7, August 13, 1883, list 6. 33. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 62, delo 2, November 4, 1885. 221

N otes to P ages 9 8 -1 0 8

Chapter 5 1. See Rieber, “The Formation”; also J. W. Kipp, “M. Kh. Reutern on the Russian State and Economy.” 2. On the emergence o f legal professionalism in Russia, see Wortman, R u s ­ s ia n L e g a l C o n sc io u sn e ss.

3. Richard S. Wortman, “Judicial Personnel and the Court Reform o f 1864,” p. 231. 4. A. F. Koni, Z a p o s le d n ie g o d y , p. 483; for similar sentiments, see V ik to r A n ­ to n o v ic h A r ts im o v ic h . V o sp o m in a n iia K h a r a k te r is tik i, pp. 730—739. 5. Koni, S o b r a n ie s o c h in e n ii, 2:354. 6. ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, list 330; see also TsGAOR, fond 583, opis’ 1, delo 46, list 30; and Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :336 and 458 for similar comments; Zaionchkovskii, K r iz is , pp. 137, 141. 7. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1: 228. 8. The most humiliating trial for the government was that o f Vera Zasulich, who in 1878 shot and seriously wounded the military governor o f Saint Petersburg, General F. F. Trepov, for mistreating a political prisoner. Minister o f Justice Count K. I. Pahlen, in a miscalculation, decided to have the case tried as a criminal case requiring trial by jury and not as a political one. The jurors acquitted Zasulich, a decision acclaimed by the public and many judges and high government officials. The government was left confused, and despite immediate orders to arrest Zasulich and the Senate’s cancellation o f the verdict, she managed to escape abroad, returning to Russia in 1905. The trials o f the members o f the populist movement who had participated in the “movement to the people” in the 1870s were held in public proceedings. The defense was represented by brilliant trial lawyers, and the Saint Petersburg Judicial Chamber re­ turned many final verdicts o f not guilty. The “Trial o f 50” took place in 1877, and the massive show “Trial o f 193” began in 1878 with 153 people acquitted. Venturi, R o o ts o f R e v o lu tio n , pp. 4 69—506; Samuel Kucherov, “The Case o f Vera Zasulich.” 9. In 1867 Alexander II demanded without success the removal o f Senator M. N. Liuboshchinskii, a formulator o f the judicial statutes, and a judge who sat in the Civil Cassation Department o f the Senate. As representa­ tive in the Petersburg zemstvo the senator had given a speech offensive to the autocracy. Wortman, R u s s ia n L e g a l C o n scio u sn ess, p. 276. 10. Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 112 —142; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :124, 320.

Chapter 6 i . Alexander II touched on the question o f communication with the Council in a directive issued on January 20, 1875; Alexander III issued a similar command on September 26, 1881, ordering that “supreme reports on 222

N otes to Pages i 0 9 -1 1 3

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

questions related to the transaction o f business o f the State Council, as also on the more important questions touching members o f the State Council, are presented to his Majesty by the president o f the State Coun­ cil, upon agreement as necessary with the responsible ministers or main administrators. In cases in which these questions closely touch a ministry or a main administration other than the State Council, then their reports are presented to his Majesty by the ministers and main administrators . . . but not without the prior agreement o f the president o f the State Coun­ cil.” G os. s o v e t, pp. 124—184. Although this command was modified in 1901, well before that time irregular but effective contacts between tsar and ministers on Council business occurred on many occasions, including the discussions o f Tolstoi’s administrative counter-reforms. The 1901 edi­ tion o f the document establishing the State Council granted ministers the right to report to the tsar on matters before the Council. Shcheglov, G o s. s o v e t v R o s s ii, pp. 173—187. TsGAOR, fond 728, opis’ 1, delo 2903, list 3. Valuev, D n e v n ik , P. A . V a lu e v a 1:72. TsGAOR, fond 722, opis’ 1, delo 124 A; delo 93, listy 103, 104, and passim. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 27; G os. so v e t, pp. 118—119; Zhitkov, “Svetloi,” p. 49. The analysis o f Alexander’s relationship with Konstantin is based on the letter, memoir, and diary literature o f the period; see, for example, Go­ lovnin’s letters to Miliutin, the correspondence between Pobedonostsev and the tsar, and the Polovtsov diaries. Kipp, “The Grand Duke,” pp. 5, 21; ORGBL, fond 169, karton 62, delo 2, November 4, 1885. Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 80—81; Firsov, “Pobedonostsev,” p. 258. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik . TsGAOR, fond 649, opis’ 1, delo 56, 1883. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:347, 2 :132. Ibid., 2:121. This is confirmed by M. T. Loris-Melikov, who knew him well. Zaionchkovskii, R o ssiish o e , p. 50; also Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 111. Witte, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:40, 429, 2 : 228; Eckhardt, A u s d e r P e te r s b u r g e r G e ­ se llsc h a ft, p. 63; Steinmann and Hurwicz, P o b je d o n o sze w , p. 108; Zaionchkovskii, R o ssiisk o e , p. 50. Otdel rukopisei Publichnoi biblioteki imeni M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, fond 208, opis’ 1, delo 11, listy 41—42. Nikolai Pavlovich, “Zaveshchanie Nikolaia I synu,” p. 291; cited in Kipp, “The Grand Duke,” p. 22. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 137. Alexander, grand duke o f Russia, O n c e a G r a n d D u k e , p. 137. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1 :388, 2:446, and passim. Thus it had been Alexander’s practice during Konstantin’s tenure (but note, not before: Alexander II had confirmed the minority position on sixteen o f thirty-two issues o f the Emancipation Statute alone) to confirm the majority recommendation except in instances when Konstantin was unable to secure a majority vote for his position; in those two cases, as we 223

N otes to P ages 1 1 4 -1 2 0

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

have seen, Alexander trusted his brother’s judgm ent over that o f the Council majority. Daniel Field, T h e E n d o f S e rfd o m , p. 353. G os. s o v e t, pp. 25, 185; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :8 8 —89. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 83. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:19. Valuev, D n e v n ik P. A . V a lu e v a , 1:357; see also Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 108. Polovtsov was a member o f the Finance Committee, which debated broad questions o f financial policy, the Taneev Commission, which discussed the abolition o f the Table o f Ranks (1883-1885), and the commission that regulated the status o f the imperial family from 1885 to 1886. T he influ­ ence o f State Secretary V. K. Pleve (1894—1902) was based not only on his position as state secretary but on his participation in most o f the special commissions o f the Council, where he was often instrumental in appoint­ ing the membership. Finally, by getting him self appointed state secretary o f Finland in 1899, he achieved his ambition o f having greater contact with the tsar, for the position entailed more frequent personal reports. G os. k a n ts ., pp. 394—395, 407—408. State Secretaries S. N. Urusov (1865—1867), D. M. Sol’skii (1867—1878), and Peretts (1878—1883) all served in the Second Section. Urusov worked there from 1838 to 1843, returning in 1864 as temporary chief. Sol’skii spent his entire career there, starting in 1852. Peretts joined the Second Section after his graduation from Saint Petersburg University in 1855 and left in 1869 to become state secretary o f the Department o f Law o f the Council. O f the nine state secretaries o f the Council who were ap­ pointed between 1854 and 1904, five had legal training (Peretts, Polov­ tsov, V. N. Murav’ov, V. K. Pleve, I. A. Iksul’fon-Gildenbandt’). Four had received a secondary or higher education at a gymnasium or a university. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2:115, 230; I. A. Fedosov et al., eds., I s to c h n ik n o v e d e n ie is to r ii S S S R X I X - n a c h a la X X v . , p. 373. ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, listy 313. 315. 317. TsGAOR, fond 583, opis’ 1, delo 46, list 2; O b z o r d e ia te l’n o s ti G o s u d a r s tv e n n o g o so v e ta z a ts a r s tv o v a n ie G o s u d a r ia I m p e r a to r a A le k s a n d r a I I I . 1 8 8 1 —1 8 9 4 ,

pp. 1 -2 . 30. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2:220, 224, and passim; Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i, 2 :9 1 6 —919; Valuev, D n e v n ik 1 8 77, p. 244; Meshcherskii, V o sp o m in a n iia , 3:255. The position o f state secretary could serve as a stepping stone to a ministerial appointment. State Secretaries D. M. Sol’skii (1867-1878), N. V. Murav’ov (1892 —1894), V. K. Pleve (1894—1902), and V. N. Kokovtsov (1902-1904) were advanced to positions as state comptroller, and ministers o f justice, interior, and finance. 31. ORGBL, fond 126, delo 11, list 89; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2:125. 32. TsGAOR, fond 583, opis’ 1, delo 47, list 88; delo 49, list 6. 33. ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, list 191; Witte, V o sp o m in a n iia , 1:332; Polov­ tsov, D n e v n ik , 2 : 273. Alexander III, no doubt, was constantly reminded o f Paul’s fate because o f his annual sojourns at Paul’s favorite residence at Gatchina. 34. Eroshkin, O c h e rk i, p. 203.

224

N otes to P ages 12 2 -1 2 7

Chapter 7 1. Maurach, D e r R e ic h s r a t, p. 168; Korkunov, R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2:98. 2. Tenure analysis and the discussion o f departmental composition are based on the annual A d r e s - k a le n d a r ’. 3. Ibid.; there were several reasons for Alexander’s dislike o f P. A. Shuva­ lov. As head o f the Third Section (1866—1873) ar|d influential adviser to Alexander II, Shuvalov kept the tsesarevich under surveillance and opened his mail. At this time Alexander was alrtady complaining o f Shuvalov’s pro-German leanings (although he appointed Shuvalov’s brother Paul to serve as Russian ambassador to Berlin from 1885 to 1894). For Alexander, Shuvalov was a “cosmopolitan” (he was also for Meshcherskii) and thus at least potentially disloyal. As ambassador to En­ gland (1874—1879), Peter Shuvalov picked up sympathy for the English system o f government and proposed something similar for Russia; Alex­ ander’s response was suitably sarcastic. On top o f all this, Alexander dis­ approved o f Shuvalov’s role in the Russo-Turkish War o f 1877—1878 and at the Congress o f Berlin. In 1881, at Polovtsov’s request, Shuvalov wrote an unofficial memorandum addressed to Saint Petersburg high society, especially its Slavophile circles, to justify his role during the war and at the Congress. Vinogradoff, “Some Letters,” p. 147; “P. A. Shuvalov o Berlinskom Kongresse 1878 g.,” in A. A. Polovtsov, “Iz dnevnika A. A. Po­ lovtsova (1881 g.)”; Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 81; Meshcherskii, V o sp o m in a n iia , 2:65. 4. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :335; see appointment policy below. 5. See Whelan, “Alexander III,” pp. 187-188, 262, for some examples o f the effect chairman support had on legslative projects before the Council. Gurko, F ea tu res a n d F ig u r e s , pp. 23—25. 6. Torke, D a s ru ssisch e B e a m te n tu m , p. 91; Zaionchkovskii, P r a v ite V s tv e n n y i, PP- 36- 397. Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 112, 141 —148; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:111, 157—158, 162, 4 1 8 -4 1 9 , 426, 439, 456, 2:200, 210, 212, 216, 219; John F. Baddeley, R u s s ia in th e “E ig h tie s," pp. 190, 196, 383. 8. Council members could be dismissed at any time by the autocrat. Proce­ dures o f dismissal were governed not by law, but by custom and tradition. Only a few cases o f such dismissal are recorded, and these usually also involved the loss o f all other public offices. Prince A. Czartoryski lost his position in 1832 because o f a decision o f the criminal courts, and Council member Baron I. Tornau was dismissed from state service in 1878. The only dismissal in Alexander I l l ’s rule involved corruption, which always aroused the tsar’s anger. He moved very quickly at the beginning o f his rule to dismiss Prince A. A. Lieven, formerly a high official in the Minis­ try o f State Domains, who was implicated in the land scandal o f Bashkir lands in Ufa. Members could themselves request dismissal, but this prac­ tice became rare after the rule o f Alexander I when ten such requests were recorded. In only one case was a member appointed twice and dis225

N otes to Pages 127-129 missed twice, Count A. A. Zakrevskii in the rule o f Nicholas I. Korkunov, 2:87; Terner, V o sp o m in a n iia , 2 :184; Peretts, D n e v n ik , pp. 13, 44, 54, 60. D. A. Tolstoi proposed the abrogation o f the independence o f zemstvo and municipal organs in his report to Alexander in 1886 partly because “people who occupy posts by virtue o f elections prove to be generally little inclined to support the authority o f that power on which their appoint­ ment does not depend.” TsGIAL, fond 1284, delo 51, list 24. See also M in is te r s tv o v n u tr e n n ik h d e l, 1 8 0 2 —1 9 0 2 . (Isto ric h e sk ii o ch erk ), pp. 172, 194; and M in is te r s tv o iu s tits ii z a 1 0 0 le t, for similar comments. Gurko, F ea tu res a n d F ig u r e s , p. 20; the Council, for example, urged post­ ponem ent o f the discussion o f the university reform project in 1883 be­ cause o f its unpopularity with the public; during the rule o f Nicholas II, the Council sponsored a resolution urging the abolition o f corporal pun­ ishment, much to the anger o f the tsar. Ibid., p. 29. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 112; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:329, 2:62, 228; Meshcherskii, V o sp o m in a n iia , 3:255; Gurko, F ea tu res a n d F ig u r e s , p. 23; Korkunov, R u s s k o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o , 2 :90. A d r e s - h a le n d a r ’ for 1855, 1881, 1894, and 1904. In 1810, the Council had thirty-five members, o f whom twenty-five came from the civil service and ten from the military. By 1855 the situation was reversed; with a total Council membership o f fifty-eight including twelve ministers, the military predominated over the civil branch (thirty-one belonged to the military and twenty-seven to the civil service). By 1881, membership in the Coun­ cil had risen to seventy-six including ministers with an equal distribution between military and civil services. By the end o f Alexander I l l ’s rule in 1894, the balance had decidedly shifted in favor o f the civil service, which now held forty-seven seats as against the military’s twenty-three. In 1904 civil and military services were again even with Council membership at ninety-five (including ministers), o f whom forty-eight served in the civil service and forty-seven in the military. For examples o f Alexander’s scrutiny consult Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 : 250, 335—337, 361, and passim; see also Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 148. On the com­ mittee, see PSZRI, 3rd ser., 14 (1894), no. 10578. G os. so v e t, pp. 30, 113, 133, 190. The section on forces affecting appointments is based on a combination o f sources, such as memoirs, diaries and letters. Especially useful were the diaries o f the consecutive State Secretaries Peretts and Polovtsov; also Pobedonostsev’s correspondence, and various unpublished diaries and letters o f officials close to the Council (Golovnin’s letters, Meshcherskii’s letters to the tsar). Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :247, 317; Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 149. One o f the favor­ ite methods employed by tsars to rid themselves o f unwanted ministers or other high personnel was to appoint them to the Council, ostensibly a promotion (as happened, for example, with Minister o f Finance N. Kh. Bunge during Alexander I l l ’s rule). TsGAOR, fond 677, opis’ 1, delo 897, listy 3 5 -3 8 , 40; Meshcherskii, Vos­ p o m in a n iia , 3 :2 5 5 —258; ORGBL, fond 126, karton 11, list 272; TsGAOR, fond 583, delo 46, list 43. R u ssk o e g o s u d a r s tv e n n o e p r a v o ,

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N otes to P ages 1 3 0 -1 4 0 18. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1:116, 140, 2:325; TsGAOR, fond 583, delo 46, list 7; ORGBL, fond 169, karton 61, delo 41. Derviz was Polovtsov’s classmate at the School o f Jurisprudence; see also Pobedonostsev’s effort in 1889 on behalf o f the appointment o f his classmate V. N. Mengden. Pobedonostsev, Z a p is k i, 2:921, 923. 19. Peretts, D n e v n ik , p. 58; Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 1 :46s, 2 :182 —183, 317. 20. Polovtsov, D n e v n ik , 2 :335. 21. TsGAOR, fond 677, delo 897, listy 62—63 an