284 PROJECTS FOR REFORMING THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION
business. But the governor was burdened with such a welter of duties
that he could not properly exercise supervision and control. He
had to decide so many questions, important as well as trivial ones,
attend so many committee meetings, that it was physically impossible
for him to give each case the attention it deserved. The amount of
routine work which burdened the governor and prevented him from
giving thought and consideration to important things, is graphically
illustrated by the following figures: in the 1840's (and the picture was
not significantly different in the 1820's) a governor had to sign up to
270 papers a day (i.e. about 100,000 a year!). This task alone would
take him 41 h hours a day if he spent only one minute on each paper.
Then the governor had to attend 17 meetings of committees and bureaus
daily; in addition, all criminal cases in the province (both big and
small) were submitted for his "review".l As noted in a previous
chapter, the governor did not even have the help of a reliable and
competent staff which could prepare and digest the material coming
up for his decision. The number of educated policy-making assistants
was extremely small, and they too were overburdened with work. As
for the run of the mill clerical staff, they were, in Speransky's words,
"a mob of 'office boys', semi-literate and poor as beggars." 2 No con-
structive help could possibly be expected from them.
This all-powerful and much harassed governor was not provided
with any clear and systematic rules to guide his actions. The instructions
he received were always extremely broad and vague. The governor had
to decide individual cases without the benefit of a general directive;
or else, he had to apply for a specific ruling to St. Petersburg, a ruling
which was of little use in other cases. The absence of clear directives,
the labyrinthian maze of ad hoc decisions, the frequent exemptions
from common rules by imperial or ministerial decree, gave the governor
a wide range for exercising his own discretion. Little wonder if this
latitude was frequently abused for selfish personal ends and if governors
sometimes tyrannized their provinces for years without being detected. A
glaring recent illustration had been the administration of Pestel and
Treskin in Siberia.
Therefore, the first concern of Speransky was to devise some means
for supervising and controlling effectively the power and actions of
the provincial governor. In an introduction to a project written in
1821, which remained incompleted, he pointed out that the main lack
of Russia's provincial administration was some means for supervising
1 1. Blinoy. (;u/Jemator)' - istoriko-illridicheskii ocherk (st. Pbg., 1905), p. 161.
2 "Zamechaniia 0 gubernskikh uchrezhdeniiakh," lac. cit., p. 96.