LAST YEARS - CONCLUSION 865bureaucracy, but also its inherent weakness and inadequacy. He set it
a high standard of honesty, devotion to the good of state and country,
and concern for the national welfare (it remained an accepted and
respected ideal, even if not always attained in fact by some officials).
He helped to inculcate a belief in orderly and just administration on
the basis of clearly defined rules. He tried to establish an effective
supervisory control over all authorities· to prevent arbitrary bureau-
cratic despotism. He set for the government a high goal of spiritual
progress towards which it could guide the nation. And he revived the
traditional belief that as long as a ruler was absolute, he had the
obligation of ruling according to the tenets of Christian justice and
morality (something Peter the Great's successors had been prone to
forget).
By extending the government's concern from mere efficient adminis-
tration to the fields of social welfare and the people's economic pros-
perity, Speransky gave a new direction to the administration's thinking
on economic matters. The idea of having the government play a
guiding role had some merit for a country that was quite backward
and where no class had developed qualities of social leadership. Yet the
drawbacks of such a course were equally significant and in historical
perspective, tended to cancel the positive value. But complete reliance
on the autocratic monarch hurt not only Speransky personally in 1812,
it proved to be a handicap for Russia's development as well. Spe-
ransky's belief that the bureaucracy could always provide leadership
and inspiration and act as the guiding hand, was uncritically accepted
later by less insightful, less devoted, and less high minded officials who
perverted his goal. But most fatal to the success of the approach proved
to be his basic conservatism in social and institutional matters. He was
radical only in the bureaucratic, organizational sense, but not in the
social or political. All important problems ultimately became for him
- and Russian bureaucracy - technical problems of administration.
Such problems could be solved by some appropriate decree or change
in the organization of a government body without touching upon the
fundamental political or social regime of the country.
Speransky's influenCe consisted mainly in the attitude and frame
of mind he brought to his task and its challenges.^1 He was a man ot
1 The French historian, Leonce Pingaud, put it rather neatly: "quant it lui
[Speransky], il se presente it nous comme un Turgot moscovite, plus remarquable
par ce qu'il a souhaite que par ce qu'il a realise. II edt desire l'abolition du
servage et du tchine, c·est it dire Ie droit du peuple it la propriete, de la noblesse it
l'independance." Leonce Pingaud, Les Fran,ais en Russie et les Russes en France
(VAnden Regime - l'emigration - les Invasions). Paris 1886, p. 261.