862 LAST YEARS ...,.. CONCLUSION
was first of all a technical improvement. But it also set new goals to
national political life. Indeed, by specifying that the administration
had to ~ based on solid and stable laws and rules, and had to act in
a consistent fashion, the state implied that there was a goal for the
actions of the government. In the past, before Speransky's time, the
Russian state had set goals for itself; but these goals were limited to
the finding of means for solving mainly military and diplomatic prob-
lems. It did not have a clear conception of an over-all domestic policy
or of a long range purpose for its actions. Hence the great vacillations,
contradictory policies, and personal caprices which were characteristic
of Russian political life in the 18th century. This was not changed
overnight, of course, by Speransky. But he introduced the Russian
government to an awareness of the need for a national policy goal.
Following in his footsteps, the more progressive and "liberal" officials
began to formulate concrete goals for government. Besides its obvious
role of internal and external protection, the government and the s~ate,
in Speransky's view, should lead the nation unto the path of higher
spiritual and moral progress and of greater economic prosperity. Thereforms of Alexander II were predicated on that very same idea, and
so were the desiderata put forth by the liberal and zemstvo leaders in
the early 20th century. Even the "reactionary" Katkov and right-wing
Slavophiles shared this attitude. In developing this outlook on the func-tion or government, Speransky played a seminal and leading part. For
better or for worse, it helped Russia to avoid the extremes of absolute
laisser faire and maximum restriction of the area of government action
(as Karamzin had advocated) for the duration of the entire 19th
century.
With most of his contemporaries (and many liberal officials of later
generations), Speransky saw in the preservation of autocr;tcy the best
guarantee for the proper performance of the function of the state just
mentioned. For the autocratic ruler, he felt, assisted by an enlightened
bureaucracy, could disregard all particular and narrow selfish interests
and work exclusively for the transcendant good of the nation. Moral
and economic betterment of the nation fostered by the actions of the
state (i.e., autocratic sovereign) by means of a well ordered government
and clear and stable laws administered by an enlightened bureaucracy,
this was Speransky's political program and that of many reformers
after him. In respect to the Russian administration, it laid the founda-
tion of a tradition of service to the true interests of the people, a
tradition that had not existed earlier, and that found its best represent-
atives in the zemstvo, health, school and judicial officials of a later