266 GOVERNING RUSSIA'S PROVINCES
tice remained under the control of the Governor General and his aides. 1
The distinctive feature of the system, as noted by both contemporary
and succeeding generations, and often adduced to condemn Speransky,
was its bureaucratic character. Almost all functions of the administra-
tive, economic, and even social life of Siberia rested in the hands of
officials. Local "society" participated in an extremely limited way, and
only in matters affecting the towns and townships. The reasons for
Speransky's course were twofold: on the one hand was the old bureau-
cratic and paternalistic tradition of Russian government; on the other
was Speransky's skepticism of the ability of a crude and in many ways
backward Siberian society to be of positive help to the administration.
There was no local nobility, and it was not expected that it would
develop there because of the prohibition to extend serfdom into Siberia.
There was no enlightened or even formally educated class, except the
bureaucracy itself. Of course, the bureaucracy was not very good either,
but it at least could be improved under a proper system; and it indeed
did show some improvement in the decades following the application
of the statute of 1822.2 Until the population at large had matured
sufficiently to participate in the administration, the bureaucracy had
to be entrusted with the task of control and leadership. Speransky's
conception of the role of the Siberian bureaucracy corresponded to his
fundamental political belief that the prime function of the state was
to be the guide in the nation's progress towards moral improvement.
He hoped that, as this progress took place, the role of the bureaucracy
would be restricted. Then the membership of the councils set up with
each executive head (Governor General and provincial governor)
would include not only bureaucrats, but also delegates or representa-
tives of the local population. In this flexibility, in this ability to become
the framework for a "representative" as well as a bureaucratic
system, Speransky saw the great merit of his work. Unfortunately, he
had counted without the timorous caution of the government, without
its almost pathological fear of the participation of "public opinion" in
administration; a fear which made for even greater rigidity and bu-
reaucratic control in later decades. Yet, the fact remains that in spite of
all these drawbacks, the Statute of 1822 introduced to Siberia for the
first time in its history something which we can call the rule of law,
1 Prutchenko, Sibirskie okrainy: oblastnye ustanovleniia, sviazannye s Sibirskim
Uchrezhdimiem 1822 g. v stroe upravleniia russkogo gosudarstva (St. Pbg. 1899),
vol. I, p. 279.
2 As one contemporary put it: "the bureaucracy could bring forth a man of
Speransky's caliber, whereas the merchant class produced only Baranov, 'a vicious
and drunken muzhik'."