296 PROJECfS FOR REFORMING THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATIONIn his schemes for local administration Speransky had not yet taken
into account the millions of personal serfs, for he did not expect their
early emancipation. And, as we know, in his view only free individuals
could be allowed to participate in public life, for they alone had the
spiritual and moral qualities prerequisite for the task. He felt that
the emancipation would be the last stage, the crowning stone of thereconstruction of Russian political life. It could not be hoped for in
less than a generation or two. 1
Anyone studying Speransky's views on Russia's social structure and
his suggestions for transforming it, has the feeling that he shied from
dealing with the problem except in a narrow and formal way.2 Was it
because he still felt uneasy about his own lowly social origin andhesitated to show his true attachments? Or was it because he realized
the inadequacy of bureaucratic palliative measures in this field and
the need for a fundamental change in attitude towards serfdom which
he was too cautious and timid to advocate overtly? We do not know
which of these was paramount: perhaps they both played their part.
But still, his reluctance to deal more fully with serfdom in his major
political papers and in the projects devoted to local government, does
come as a surprise. The abolition of serfdom, by whatever method,
was certainly well in keeping with Speransky's philosophical premises
and political ideal of developing the potentialities of the individual,
of educating and guiding the nation towards a higher moral and
spiritual goal. Obviously, as long as the majority of the Russian people
was in a state of serfdom, his ultimate aims had no chance of being
ever achieved. Even his very valuable proposals for improving the localadministration, if they meant more than a bureaucratic scheme for
state peasants and nobility alone, were closely bound up with
emancipation.
But, besides this apparent avoidance of the subject, an unwillingness
to tackle its complexities, Speransky's views present another difficulty
to his biographer. Whatever he wrote on this subject has remained
extremely fragmentary, a reflection perhaps of his reluctance to deal
with the subject thoroughly. In his writings, he conceived of serfdom
in narrow historical and legal terms, taking little account of the actual
social realities. Besides, even these unsatisfactory fragments have not
been published in full and remain inaccessible in their original fOT'll.
Speransky wrote at least one lengthy memorandum on the subject of
1 Letter to v. Kochubei, 21 Sept. 1818, lac. cit., and letter to Stolypin, 2 May
1818, Russkii Arkhiv, (1869), p. 1703.
2 Cf. V. Semevskii, Krest'ianskii vopros, I, p. 348 (note).