254 GOVERNING RUSSIA'S PROVINCES
man could not refrain from shouting to Speransky: "Batiushka, what
are you doing? Don't you know that this is Loskutov?"
The first and most urgent task was to dismiss and turn over to the
courts the officials who had abused their power, plundered the treas-
ury, and persecuted the population. As he had done in Penza, Speransky
traveled from one administrative and judiciary center to another, staying
in each until all officials had been investigated, the guilty ones removed,
and the backlog of the court's calendar cleared up. Speransky had the
power to bring to account the lesser officials directly. He also could
suspend vice-governors, as he did in the case of the vice-governor of
Tomsk. But the top officials, those most responsible for Siberia's con-
dition, like Pestel and Treskin themselves, could be tried only by the
Senate. There their cases remained under consideration for a long time,
way beyond the period of Speransky's stay in Siberia. And at the end,
the defendants obtained the mitigation of the accusation and suffered but
the slightest punishment. The computation made by Vagin - the chron-
icler of Speransky's activities in Siberia - gives an idea of the limits of the
governor general's action and shows that more than one good adminis-
trator was needed to reform the territory. In all, 681 were charged with
various misdeeds; of these only 43 received various degrees of severe
punishments, while 375 were vindicated, and the balance got off with
slight disciplinary acti9u.
The great difficulty was that while practically every official in Siberia
was guilty in some way or other according to the letter of the law,
Speransky could do little about it, for there was no ready replacement.
Thus the smaller fry went scot free. The lack of adequately trained and
honest officials was even more glaring· than in European Russia, while
at the same time the remedy was more difficult to find. Siberia had no
gentry that could-potentially at least - be tapped to replenish the
ranks of government service. While "public opinion" was weak in
European Russia, it was completely absent in Siberia. There was not
even a potential source for it, as education was as sadly lacking as order-
ly administration. 1 But what about the other classes, could they not
provide candidates for both government service and "public opinion"?
Unfortunately not, Speransky felt. The peasants, though free, were out
of question for fear of the repercussion their participation in public life
might have in Russia proper. Furthermore, the peasants were scattered
over vast territories and were highly uneducated. The clergy was very1 "In Siberia there has not been, and there is not now a public opinion; and for
a long time yet there will not be any because of the lack of a nobility." Speranskii,
Obozrenie glavnykh osnovanii mestnogo upravleniia Sibiri (St. Pbg. 1841), p. 13.