PRO]EGrS FOR REFORMING THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION 289administrative schemes. It should be added, however, that when
speaking of peasants, Speransky had in mind only the state peasants
which, of course, limited the portee of his proposals to a minority.
But the reasoning was applicable to the other classes of society as well:
strengthen the "society" of the nobility by giving a greater role to their
assemblies and marshals, extend the range of self-administration of the
merchants and artisans in the cities. 1
The preceding considerations provided the basis for concrete sug-
gestions of reform made by Speransky on several occasions in the 1820's.
The first instance was the reorganization of Siberia which we have
examined earlier in its own context. Then he started - but did not
complete - the drafting of a statute for the establishment of Lieuten-
ancies. It followed very closely the provisions of the statute of 1822
on the administrative organization of Siberia. In truth, Speransky seems
to have only made a superficial adaptation of the Siberian reforms to
European Russia. Several paragraphs of the project were literally copied
from the statute on Siberia. In it Speransky was mainly concerned
with the establishment of some machinery by which to supervise (and
restrain) the overly extended and arbitrary powers of the provincialgovernor. To establish such a machinery in every province of European
Russia, would be too cumbersome; it would make the administrative
apparatus more top-heavy than it already was. The solution was to
organize the supervision on a higher level than the provinces, and still
not concentrate it in the capital, for St. Petersburg was far away and
the ministries overburdened with too much detail as it was.^2
As in Siberia, and in imitation of Balashov's and Novosiltsev's earlier
plans of a federalistic character, Speransky recommended that several
provinces be grouped together in one region (oblast' or okrug) under
a Lieutenant or a Governor General. The Lieutenant or Governor
General - a member of the Governing Senate and of the Committee
of Ministers - would not concern himself with the routine matters of
provincial administration. These would remain in the hands of the
local governors. The Lieutenant's function would be to supervise and
control the governors under his jurisdiction, under instructions from
the Governing Senate. In the performance of his duties, the Lieutenant
or Governor General was to be assisted by a Council and together they
form the Regional Administration (oblastnoe or narmestnicheskoe
upravlenie). The Regional Administration would act as the Committee1 Ibid., p. 102.
2 "Proekt uchrezhdeniia oblastnogo upravleniia," Materialy ... komissii 0 pre-
obrazovanii gubernskikh i uezdnykh uchrezhdenii, I (1870), pp. 86-87.