Michael Speransky. Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 - Marc Raeff

(Chris Devlin) #1

286 PROJECTS FOR REFORMING THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION


with some sarcasm, the Land Captain had to catch murderers as well
as petty thieves, collect a fine of a few pennies as well as 100,000 rubles
in tax arrears. 1 And when we recall the background, education, and
experience of this factotum, we shall be surprised not so much by the
abuses and defects of his administration as by the fact that he could
administer at all..
Writing to his friend, Senator Stolypin, about the difficulties he had
in finding replacements for local officials he had to dismiss in Penza,
Speransky characterized the essential weakness of the provincial
administration in the following terms: "Not a single honest, even
mediocre individual wants to serve in the subordinate, debased, and
poverty-stricken Land Police; noblemen £lee from the elections,' and
soon they will have to be corraled by gendarmes to force them to make
use of those valuable rights which, for intelligent and natural reasons,
have been given to them so generously." 2 Observations like this, served
to strengthen Speransky's reliance on centralization and bureaucracy.
Speransky pinned little hope on the nobility - or any other social
class for that matter - to help the overwrought ispraruniks in the
supervision of the regular £low of justice and administration. Nor
could the basic change of local administration be entrusted to an
elective representative assembly, he felt. Even if suitable men could be
found to fill such an assembly - and this was highly doubtful - they
would be of little help and only an expensive and useless luxury.
The accomplishments of an elected assembly depended on the prepara-
tion its members might have for participating in the work of a
representative assembly. But what was the Russian situation in this
respect? The nobles formed the most educated social class, but if one
were to exclude the officials (who could not be made to participate in
an elected representative assembly, of course), the ranks of the nobility
would be reduced to the lazy and uneducated "old timers" residing
on their estates. Such men were quite unprepared for the job, either
theoretically or practically; and anyway, they were not numerous
enough. The same, even with more justification, could be said of the
merchants and townspeople. The conditions of Russian commerce, on
the retail level, were not conducive to wide information or experience
with matters social and political. Furthermore, the number of merchants
was so small that they could not be distracted from their usual occupa-
tions without upsetting the economic life of the nation. As to the


1 "Zamechaniia 0 gubernskikh uchrezhdeniiakh," loco cit., p. 100.
2 Letter to Senator Stolypin, dated 19 November ISIS, Russkii Arkhiv, (IS69),
p. 1977.
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