Michael Speransky. Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 - Marc Raeff

REFORM OF RUSSIA'S FINANCES AND CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION 85

had been covered in part by English subsidies, and it was these sub-

sidies that permitted Russia to resume the struggle in 1812. But while

the peace signed at Tilsit with France lasted, this extraordinary source

of revenue was closed to the Russian government. It was impossible to

float enough loans abroad anymore. Napoleon, Alexander's new

"ally," was of no help in this matter. On the contrary, he made things

worse by forcing Russia to join the Continental System which resulted

in serious loss of revenue from customs receipts and trade. If the

Russian state was to escape bankruptcy and if the country was to

avoid economic collapse, radical and well thought out measures had

to be taken.

Luckily, Russia was able to tackle this difficult task, for it was

prepared intellectually and had also the necessary personnel. In the

early years of Alexander's reign, political economy experienced an

extraordinary popularity. Anyone with intellectual pretensions or who

wanted to be considered as an educated person, read Adam Smith, J-B.

Say, and their many popularizers. We need only to mention Eugene

Onegin to remember that the fad for political economy affected even

the dandies and courtiers of St. Petersburg. The snobs and the jeunesse

doree were not alone in their interest in economics. Officials, high

dignitaries, and scholars devoted much time and effort to the study

of problems of finance and economics. In 1803 a section for political

economy was founded at the Imperial Academy of Sciences; prizes were

offered for the best treatises on various economic questions, such as

the advantages of free labor, free competition, and the like. 1 Many

foreign scholars who resided and taught in Russia put their expert

knowledge of economics at the disposal of the imperial government.

Among these specialists, mostly Germans, by the way, were Storch,

Adelung, Hermann, Raupach, Jacob. To this list should be added the

names of two scholars, Western Slavs by nationality, but trained in
Germany: Balugianskii and Lodi. Foreign statesmen like vom Stein
and Kankrin helped introduce the government and the Court to the
principles of the new economic science. Finally, as time went on, the
government began to make use of young Russians who had been
trained at Goettingen, at the time the most important center for the
study of political economy. Among the German trained young generation,
the two brothers Turgenev, Alexander and Nicholas, are the best
known; but they were by no means the only ones.

1 Cf. Shtein, Bliumin, Sviatlovskii cited in bib!. to chapter. Sf'e A. 1. Khodnev,
lstoriia lmperatorskogo Vol'nogo Ekonomicheskogo obshchestva s 1765 do 1865 gg
(St. Pbg. 1865), pp. 38-46, 71 for the first statistical questionnaires sent out at
that time.