360 LAST YEARS - CONCLUSIONbut he streamlined the procedure and clarified the aims and task. For
example, the idea of well-run and controlable ministries had been in the
air since the days of Catherine II. A concrete start had been made under
Paul; later the decrees of 1802 contained many good suggestions. On
these preparatory efforts Speransky built his organization of the Ministry
of the Interior in 1803, which in tum served as model for the statute
of 1811. His Council of State - often considered as his most original
contribution to Russian central government institutions - was a direct
lineal descendant of the earlier advisory councils of the sovereign; and
even some of its concrete and specific features had been adumbrated
in the Council set up in 1801, and in the discussions of the Unofficial
Committee. In Siberia, too, Speransky in large measure carried on the
policies of Pestel and Treskin, though by much better methods. Finally,
Speransky's approach to codification showed that he had repudiated his
first false start and had returned to some of the conceptions and
methods advocated and initiated by his predecessors and by his rival,
Baron Rosenkampf.
All this in itself was by no means a small achievement. At the time,
perhaps, no one else could have brought these various tasks to a
successful conclusion. But why did this upstart, the son of a villagepriest, without connections and party at court, alone succeed where
other dignitaries had failed? The answer, it would seem, lies not so
much in his superior intellectual abilities (though they were no mean
factor), as in his superb mastery of bureaucratic technique. He was a
virtuoso of bureaucratic operation, unsurpassed in Russia either before
or after.
The elegance of his style and the facile clarity of his exposition,
which we have pointed out earlier, were a significant factor in his per-
sonal success as redacteur, but they are only one side of the picture. t
Had his influence been only one of style, its impact would probably
have been limited to giving welcome :r:elief to the historian working
through the official records of the period. While his style was imitated
and perpetuated by succeeding generations of Russian officials, it alone
would not have made his great fame. His way of thinking, on the otherhand, was an important factor in his success. To begin with, unlike his
less logical and less acute colleagues, he saw the problem clearly right
away in terms of its practical, organizational, and administrative im-
plications. Seeing the problem in this fashion was .already half the battle1 Speransky's stylistic talent as an explanation of his successful career is, in our
opinion, greatly exaggerated by A. E. Nol'de in his (manuscript) biography of
Speransky.