CHAPTER IXPROJECTS FOR REFORMING
THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATIONWith the return of Speransky to St. Petersburg from Siberia in1821, a new period began in his political career. It would be an exag-
geration to maintain, as some historians have done, that exile and
service in remote provinces of the Empire had broken him morally
and had transformed him into a spineless courtier, willing to undertakeany assignment, however unpleasant. It is nonetheless true that
Speransky returned to the capital a somewhat changed man. He never
had been a very willful personality; his origins and early seminary
schooling had developed in him a timid flexibility which could easily
be taken for spinelessness. Also, by 1822 Speransky had lost most of
his earlier energetic enthusiasm and self-confident faith in his work.
After a decade of humiliation, loneliness, and wandering, he returned
to the court a more humble, cautious, and "plodding" high bureaucrat.
In contrast to the years before his exile, he displayed a full awareness
of the limitations, and perhaps even uselessness, of general and
"fundamental" solutions. He had lost faith in the support of the
monarch who alone, in his opinion, might lead in a general transforma-
tion of the country. Speransky had observed the lack of understanding
and suspicion with which the population greeted the government's
innovations and experiments. He foreswore any effort at sweeping,
basic reforms based on the most modern theoretical considerations. This
new mood of his fitted well with his position at court after 1821. He
had lost the favor and confidence of Alexander I and never regained
anything like the influence he had enjoyed before his exile. To
Alexander's mind, he now was merely the capable bureaucrat who
could be entrusted with a variety of tasks, but always in ~ strictly
technical capacity. As for Nicholas I, who succeeded his brother
Alexander in 1825, he was notoriously suspicious of theories and
general principles in politics, a suspicion that had been fostered by