154 PLANS OF REFORlVIdraft of the Plan of 1809 has been lost too; and anyway, as it was not
an "academic" or scholarly "paper," it would not have contained
references to the sources on which Speransky had drawn for its
composition. It does not seem, to our mind, a very rewarding or
fruitful enterprise to attempt to track down the specific source for
each statement or to find a model in Western European political
practice for every concrete measure proposed by Speransky in his
plans.^1 Much of what Speransky wrote belonged to the Zeitgeist and
was common knowledge among the educated. Following the well
proven practice of the philosophes, he took perhaps great care to dress
up his ideas in the fashion of his day and to enhance their appeal by
stating them in. the "jargon" of the Enlightenment - a jargon which
was particularly familiar to and appreciated by Alexander 1.2
In addition to the phraseology of the Enlightenment, Speransky in-
troduced a new note. On several occasions he stressed the peculiarities
of Russian historical development - not so much qualitatively different
from the Western European pattern as differing in degree and chronol-
ogy. On this ground he argued for a political organization that would
arise out of Russia's historical experience. He believed that all political
systems were based on the specific needs of a nation's spiritual devel-
opment at a given time. In this respect, Speransky followed through
the ideas, developed first by Montesquieu, that later gave the founda-
tion to "historicism" and an organic conception of national history.
Even in his first suggestion (1802) concerning the method to be followed
in codifying law, he displayed an attitude which Savigny would not
have repudiated. Speransky's thought, therefore, contained elements
of a historicist approach to politics, an approach that had been given
vogue by Edmund Burke and elaborated by the German school.
From a contemporary point of view, Speransky's understanding of the
historical process does not strike one as particularly profound or
accurate. But when compared to that of his Russian contemporaries -
and let us remember that Karamzin had not yet published the first
volume of his History - and to that of the French philosophes, it
showed perspicacity and insight. Understandably, he shared the interest
for history of the late 18th century, and he had what Meinecke has
called a "negative historical sense," a transitional form of the conscious-
ness of historical development preceding and preparatory to "his tor-
1 Speransky quotes directly Montesquieu. Bentham. Blackstone. Sir Francis Bacon,
Beccaria. Di rect evidence of his use of Elangieri and J. J. Rousseau can be easily
detected too.
2 Sec Appendix.