APPENDIX
THE EARLY POLITICAL WRITINGS OF SPERANSKY
(Adapted from: M. Raeff: "Le Climat politique et les projets de Tt!-
forme dans les premieres annees du regne d'Alexandre Ier", Cahiers dv
Monde russe et sovietique, vol. II, No.4, Octobre-Decembre 1961, pp.
423-430).
The recent publication in the Soviet Union of Speransky's projects
and memoranda makes available several documents which, heretofore,
had been known only through excerpts or summaries. 1 It affords us an
opportunity of arriving ~t a more precise and detailed evaluation of this
period in Russian political thought.
We now possess material proof of the connections between Speransky
and members of the "Senatorial" and aristocratic "party". The original
manuscript - recently discovered - of the "Remarks concerning the
Senate" shows that the text of the memorandum, submitted over Count
A. R. Vorontsov's name, had been drafted by Speransky. 2 Like his friend
and older colleague, Alexander Radishchev, Speransky had been an assis-
tant to Vorontsov during the first years of the reign of Alexander I
when the discussions concerning the reorganization of the "chaotic struc-
ture of the Empire" were at their liveliest.
No doubt it will be for ever impossible to ascertain with certainty to
what extent Speransky was expressing his own ideas and to what extent
he merely gave literary form to those of his patrons. Even though, the
memoranda arid projects drafted by Speransky in 1802-1803 are an im-
portant source for a better understanding of the dynamic elements in
his own, as well as the Senatorial party's, thinking. vVe shall analyse
these memoranda and projects to determine their basic principles. As
the documents, some of them published now for the first time, are
roughly contemporary, we may examine their theoretical and methodolo-
gical aspects without regard to their sequence.1 S. N. Yalk. ed .. M. M. Sperallsltii - Proehl), i :apishi. ~Ioscow-Leningrad 1961
('-\kadcmiia Nauk, Institut istorii, Len'ngradskoe otdelen:e). hueafter Proehl)' i =apis-
hi.
2 Ibid., introduction of S. N. Yalk. p. 14