CHAPTER. ITHE BEGINNINGSAs so often happens with illustrious men who have risen from the
lower classes, little is known of the early years of the life of
Michael Speransky. Even his contemporaries were unable to gather
much information: the family records and papers perished in a fire
in 1834, and Speransky himself was not very communicative. Whatever
information we possess has been collected by Speransky's first biographer,
the industrious baron Modest A. Korl. To fill the gap in the written
documentation, Korl endeavored to interview, personally or by means
of written questionnaires, all those who had had any contacts with
Speransky. But memories about a remote period - Korl was inquiring
about events that had taken place fifty years earlier. - are likely to
be quite dim and strongly influenced by the knowledge of subsequent
happenings. Unfortunately, too, Baron Korf was not always sufficiently
critical of his sources, and we must be careful in using the evidence
he has assembled. We must, perforce, be content with a few details
and .a bare outline of Speransky's formative years.
Michael Speransky was born on January 1, 1772, the son of the
priest of Cherkutino village, the family estate of the Saltykovs, in the
province of Vladimir.l At first the future State Secretary was known
only ,as Michael, the son of Michael the priest of Cherkutino. Family
names had been introduced legally shortly before Speransky's birth,
but many peasants had not received any yet; and in this respect - as
in so many others - the village priests were not much different trom
their flocks. Apparently, Speransky received his last name only upon
entering the theological seminary of Vladimir, and following a
tradition current among the clergy, the name was derived from the
Latin. In Speransky's case, the choice proved to be both appropriate
and prophetic.
1 For a long time the date of his birth was in doubt, and only the patient
investigations of Baron Korf have definitely established it. Records were not kept
too carefully in those times, even by the clergy, and Speransky himself was not too
sure whether he had been horn in 1771 nr 1772.