ADMINISTRATIVE AGrIVITIES 1802-1812^53from their path all obstacles which might stop them. Everything
forces us to prefer this latter principle to the former: the experience
of the states where aU the areas of economic activity have been
brought to perfection, allows no doubt as to its correctness. But
in Russia, perhaps, some qualifications should be made to it
[principle of free economic activity]. When the national industry,
strengthened by time and conditions, will have reached, so to
say, its fuU maturity, it can and must be allowed to proceed
alone, its path being supervised only from afar. But in its early
beginnings, when its weak forces do not allow the consolidation
of its enterprises, when experience has not yet fully clarified its
prospects; when many areas of the economy are yet unknown -
the government has the obligation to guide it [the nation's
industry], to show where its advantages lie, to promote it through
encouragement and even - where there is lack of capital - to
give it subsidies. Therefore, the three main principles which have
guided me [Kochubei] in my report to Your Majesty on problems
of national economy have been: to collect as much correct data
as possible about all types of enterprises, to encourage those
[industries] which have not reached their full strength, and, finally,
to remove from their path everything that could hamper or stop
them." 1This lengthy passage throws much interesting light on the thinking
of Speransky (and other high officials) on the relationship between
political power and economic activity. His ultimate aim is freedom for
individual economic activity, the restriction of the state's role to that
of "night watchman", at least in this particular area of national life.
It was an ideal which he had taken from the more progressive thinkers
of Western Europe whose efficacy he had found proven by the results
achieved in those countries which had made the principle of free
enterprise their own - England in particular. And yet, following the
preconceptions of enlightened absolutism and bowing to Russian
administrative tradition, doubtful of Russia's abilities of developing a
high level of economic activity - largely because of many legal and
social restrictions which Speransky was tactful enough to pass in
silence - he felt that the state had to "educate" the country foreconomic freedom. It was up to the government to show the way and
to support actively the nation's economic and industrial development1 "Doklad Ministra Vnutrennikh Del, 1803," Zhurnaly Komiteta Ministrov, I,
Appendix I, p. 61. The German text is in Storch, op. cit., vol. VI No. 16, Gan.
1805), pp. 1-148 (our quotation is on pp. 53-54). Some interesting details on the
early penetration of A. Smith's ideas in Russia can be found in I. S. Bak,
"Obshchestvennoekonomicheskie vozzreniia I. A. Tret'iakova," Voprosy [storii
(Sept. 1954), pp. 104-113.