ADMINISTRATIVE ACnVITIES 1802-1812 63the main redacteur of the statute was Martynov who often consulted
Speransky for guidance and advice. 1
However, these pedagogical principles - as carried out in the Lycee- were not readily accepted by everybody in St. Petersburg. In particu-
lar, the "liberal" and progressive features of the Lycee's curriculum
found no sympathy with those who had wanted to introduce the educa-
tional philosophy of the Jesuits. These circles pursued the Lycee, its
founders, staff, and pupils with unrelenting hatred. The point of their
attacks was directed against Speransky, the reputed author of those
features which even the influence of Count A. Razumovskii had proven
incapable of eliminating (in particular the stress on the natural scien-
ces). Denunciation of his pedagogical ideas and pernicious influence
on Russian youth became a part of the campaign of calumny directed
at Speransky in the following years. For instance, Joseph de Maistre,
blaming enlightened and rational education for all the political evils
of his day, expounded the view that Speransky had destined the Lycee
for bringing up a generation that would subvert the traditional order
of autocracy in Russia. 2 In this way way the foundation of the school,
one of the centers of Russia's literary and cultural development in the
19th century, served to undermine the position of Speransky who, in
any case, was but indirectly responsible for it. So deeply ingrained was
the belief that Speransky was the creator of the Lycee and promoter of
of its evil liberal, rationalistic, and sceptical spirit that Metternich,
repeating de Maistre's argument, blamed the secret societies, discovered
in the 1820's, on the Lycee and Speransky.3
Better schools for the future officials of the Empire were only one
condition for a general reform and reorganization of the administra-
tion and its personnel. The most important stumbling block to any
improvement lay in the very foundation of Russia's bureaucracy: the
Table of Ranks of Peter the Great. True enough, the Table of Ranks
1 Kolbasin, "I. I. Martynov - perevodchik grecheskikh klassikov", Sovremennik,
(March-April 1859), p. 41.
2 Joseph de Maistre, "Cinq lettres sur l'education publique en Russie, it Monsieur
Ie comte Rasoumowski, ministre de l'instruction publique (Juin 1810)," Oeuvres
completes, VIII (Paris 1884), pp. 163-232; Ar. Fateev, "La disgr~ce d'un homme
d'etat. (it l'occasion du centenaire de la mort de Speransky en 1839)", I, Zapiski
Tusskogo nauchno-issledovatel'skogo ob'edineniia v PTage vol. X (old series vol. XV),
Praha 1940, pp. 38-39. On Jesuit educational activities in Russia, see M. J. Rouet
de Joumel, Un college de jesuites Ii Saint PeteTsbouTg 1800-1816, (Paris 1922).
3 See the interesting dispatch of Mettemich to the Austrian ambassador to St.
Petersburg, Count Lebzeltem, dated 17 April 1826. Metternich writes, entre autres:
"Je viens de reclamer de M. de Hauenschild [who had been director of the Lycee's
boarding school] une histoire detaillee de l'etablissement du Lycee de Zarskoie-Selo.
Elle devra offrir beaucoup d'inter~t et fournir la clef du phenomene, que ce s~nt,
pour ainsi dire, Ies propres enfants de l'infortune Alexandre, qui avaient jure sa
ruine ,et jusqu'it son assassinat." Kobeko, op. cit., p. 260.