ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIVITIES 1802-1812 67result of Prince Lopukhin's suggestion (embodied in PSZ 21,187,
February 28, 1804) to elaborate the "principia juris," first. This led
to an impasse as the government and the Commission could not formu-
late such principles. At this point the chairmanship of the Com-
mission passed to N ovosiltsev who appointed the German Baltic Baron
Rosenkampf as head of the working staff. Baron Rosenkampf, though
he had received excellent training in jurisprudence in Germany, and
was an able and learned man, was quite unsuited for the task, as he
was not familiar with Russian law, Russian conditions, or even the
Russian language. He was an ardent proponent of the historical and
practical approach to codification. He believed in distilling the new
code from the existing legislation, in determining the basic Russian
concepts of law as they had been elaborated historically, and in preserv-
ing the peculiarities of local legal norms. Quite understandably, as a
Balt, he wanted to prevent the absorption of local traditions in an
uniform imperial code. The norms of law arrived at by the historico-
empirical method would then be firmly established and secured per-
manently with the help of intangible principia juris. But these prin-
ciples had either to be proclaimed by the government (as Lopukhin had
suggested) or, as Rosenkampf felt, derived from Western, especially
German, norms and concepts. However, the goverment was neither wil-
ling nor prepared to give Rosenkampf or the Commission any direc-
tion on what the "principia juris" should be. The Commission's time
was idled away in useless researches and abstract definitions, without
any concrete results emerging from all this labor. Finally, the Emperor
decided to spur on the Commission's activity by appointing an efficient
and energetic new chief. For this purpose Speransky was nominated
Assistant Minister of Justice on December 20, 1808, with the specific
mission of bringing the Commission's work to a satisfactory conclusion.
True to Alexander's expectation with Speransky's appointment things
got under way quickly. As one of the Commission's officials, Alexander
Turgenev reported to his brother Nicholas in Goettingen, the pace
and general atmosphere of the office changed almost overnight. 1
It was the first time that Speransky had to deal with law in a
technical sense - if we except, of course, the drafting of the Com-
mercial Code for Paul 1. Neither his education nor his previous
experience, had prepared him for dealing with the complex problems
1 The instructions to the Commission, written by Speransky, are in PSZ 23,525
(7 March 1809). See also the description of the change in atmosphere brought by
Speransky to tl)e Commission in the letters of Alexander 1. Turgenev to his brother
Nicholas dated 10 Sept. 1808, 10 March 1809, 1 May 1809, 31 May 1809 in Arkhiv
brat'ev Turgenevykh, II, pp. 368-391 passim.