ADMINISTRATIVE AC'fIVITIES 1802-1812 71Count Armfelt, Bishop Tengstrom, Rehbinder, and many others. As a
result, unlike most other Russian territorial conquests, Finland had a
rather special - and not very clearly defined - status within the
Empire. In some respects it was joined to Russia by bonds of a personal
union, its grand duke being the same person as the Emperor; but in
some other ways it was a real union, since the Grand Duchy had no
independent existence of its own and - in the final analysis - received
its basic laws and policies from St. Petersburg. However, Finland
retained the autonomy of its legal system, its local administration and
the traditional privileges of all its social classes. This novel and
unusual relationship between the autocratic government of the Empire
and the local authorities of the Grand Duchy had to be clearly defined
and regulated by special legislation and the creation of appropriate
institutional machinery.^1
The task of working out these administrative and political relations
fell to Speransky. Finland's inclusion in the Russian Empire - on an
autonomous basis - was publicly sanctioned by the Finnish Diet; he
put the final touch to the statutes which defined the rights and powers
of Finland's autonomous local administr~tion and its relation to the
central government of the Empire. The system as worked out and
ratified at Borgas remained basically unchanged (if we discount minor
violations) until the first years of the 20th century, when, for a brief
period, Nicholas II abolished the Grand Duchy's autonomy. Some years
after the Diet of Borgas, in 1811-1812, Speransky recommended and
helped to implement the reunion of Old Finland (Karelia and Vyborg)
annexed by Russia in the reign of Elizabeth, with the newly
acquired Grand Duchy of Finland (PSZ 24,907). 2 This measure which
incensed Russian chauvinists (and future imperialists) was designed to
conciliate the Finns and to remedy the distressing economic and
administrative situation of Vyborg, arbitrarily separated from its
natural hinterland for a century. The act of reunion illustrated
Speransky's consideration for the ethnological and historical factors in
a people's life. Such consideration naturally satisfied the national con-
sciousness of the Finns, but could hardly have pleased the extreme
nationalism of many Russians.
The legal and constitutional problems of the annexation of Finland
and the status of Finnish social and individual rights cannot detain
us here. The history of the Grand Duchy's political status concerns us
1 A similar problem arose soon again and found an analogous solution- the
Kingdom of Poland in 1815.
2 The French text is in La Constitution de la Finlande, pp. 122-23.