PLANS OF REFORM 125commoners who had risen to wealth, education, esteem, would be
elevated to the status of "optimates" in the Russian Empire.
How would these "mediators" exercise their function of advising
and informing the sovereign? The upper group of this new nobility
would form an hereditary High Chamber, the remainder would
provide the membership of a Lower Chamber (our source does not say
how this was to be done). These Chambers, however, have no specified
duties or functions. They do not possess any legislative power, and
obviously cannot play any role in the executive. The impression
created is that these Chambers, meeting at infrequent intervals, would
only present their advice and opinion on specific questions the govern-
ment might submit to them and would transmit to the Emperor
"cahiers" describing the nation's condition and the people's wishes.^1
Perhaps Speransky's reluctance to give his ideas an institutional form
stemmed from his realization that the problem of serfdom, the most
fundamental of all, had to be solved first. For as long as serfdom
remained the basis of Russian society, no practical significance could
be attached to the existence of fundamental laws.^2 He erroneously
believed - and so did the peasantry - that serfdom was the result of
a willful violation of the laws by a handful of nobles, and he felt,
therefore, that the system would be necessarily short lived. 3 In any
case, the Russian form of serfdom was so much against reason and
nature that it could not survive for long, especially since Russia had
become part and parcel of Western Europe where serfdom had been
abolished.^4 Consequently, there was no need to break serfdom forcibly
and hastily. At first, Speransky reasoned, the nobility would retain
its right to own estates inhabited by serfs. Then the abolition of serfdom
would take place in two stages. The first step would consist in clearly
stating and limiting the serfs' obligations to their masters. The initial
measure along this line had already been taken, though without much
practical effect, by Paul I who fixed the corvee at a maximum of three
days a week. This clear definition of the serf's obligations would
result in a change in the character of the peasant's dependence. Instead
of being tied to the individual serf-owner, the serf would become
bound to the land only, as had been the case in the 16th and 17th
centuries. The process would be furthered by transforming the
1 ibid., p. 79. There is a striking similarity between the functions of the Chambers
proposed by Speransky and the Slavophile conception of the Zemskii Sobor.
2 "Pervyi politicheskii traktat," p. 76.
3 ibid., p. 58. Speransky was soon to reverse his opinion completely on the
historical origins of serfdom in Russia.
4 "Pervyi politicheskii traktat," p. 80 (note), p. 76.