366 LAST YEARS - CONCLUSION
his own times and very much determined by them; in this sense, he
was much less of a creative personality than many statesmen. On the
other hand, he carried the calling of his times furthest and exemplified
it best. The setting of a high standard and of a goal to the imperial
administration was an important contribution, and a lasting one.
Probably without his contributions to the administrative machinery of
the Empire, the reforms of Alexander II would not have been possible
or, at any rate, as readily implemented.
In another sense, Speransky illustrates .the inner split of the Russian
enlightened official. On the one hand, he had a clear intellectual
awareness and understanding of the country's problems and an idea
of what had to be done. On the other, he was beset by an inability to
carry it out in institutional terms. One of the reasons for this weakness
was that he often took his ideals out of the blue, from foreign models,
and on the basis of theories which had no immediate social relevance.
As he refused to transform radically the social fabric of Russia, his
views could not be implemented without being corrupted by the
conditions to which they were applied. And when - after his exile and
governorships - Speransky came to understand and know intimately
the true conditions of Russia, he was frightened by their complexity
and difficulty and fell back on limited bureaucratic solutions. In spite
of the inadequacies, though, Speransky helped to bring about a fun-
damental break with the past. The 18th century in Russia had been a
period of administrative confusion, disorganization, and aimlessness.
The merit of Alexander I, building on the accomplishments of his
grandmother Catherine II, and of Speransky, was to bring some order,
esprit de suite, lawfulness, and stability into the governmental
machinery.
During the 18th century a relatively close bond had tied the officials
to the educated classes of society (though a serious break between the
latter and the people had occurred at the time of Peter the Great).
There was only one educated society in Russia. But at the end of the
18th century, the coming into prominence of people like Speransky,
who had no social ties with the upper classes, breached this unity. The
government of Alexander I deepened this rift by favoring the bureau-
cratic administrative organization and rejecting the aristocratic, estate
approach suggested by the Senatorial party. The Decembrist uprising
only completed the break. From that time on, the bureaucracy was
isolated from both the people and the educated upper classes, the
intelligentsia. Speransky had not consciously contributed to this develop-
ment, but his own career was an interesting illustration of it. The