The Army Takes to the Countryside 29
regional commander, ;'\lajor-General Yefimovich. \Vhen the case came t1
Arakcheyev's notice in 1821 he belatedly tried to see that justice was done. Bu
he was powerless against the tsar. Alexander happened to know the brigad•.
commandn per~onally and simply ordered him transferred to another post.'
With such dereliction of duty at the top it is not to be wondered at that sub
ordinates ignored or defied the law.
Three years later a major on Vitt's staff was charged with stealing no Jes
than 230,000 roubles. According to the investigating officer the sum was reall:
almost twice as large and the regional commander himself was a party to th<
fraud. 'Everyone from Count Vitt downwards', he wrote later, 'tried to cove
up the frequent misdeeds ... and abuses, for each saw that his superio
wanted to punish only those who made mistakes involuntarily [and not th·
actual culprits].'^86 Or, to be more precise, higher authority exercised clos
supervision over external formalities and trivial details while neglectin
matters that vitally affected the functioning of the system.It may seem unfair to evaluate the settlements as they existed in 1825, when th
scheme was still in its initial phase and had over thirty more years to rur
However, Nicholas I's modifications are best considered separately, and sine
Arakcheyev lost his command within weeks of Alexander I's death^8 i this dat
does constitute something of a landmark.
'Une pensee liberale dans un corps despotique'^88 -this was one conterr
porary's lapidary verdict, which it would be hard to improve on. The mai
errors may be listed, in order of importance, as follows:
(i) over-administration by personnel of inferior quality;
(ii) unrealistic and excessively ambitious planning;
(iii) poor choice of sites, especially in the north;
(iv) unnecessarily harsh discipline and petty regimentation.^89
These failings had a common denominator: disregard of the human factor.
Can one attempt a closer analysis of the costs and benefits? Unfortunate!
Pipes's statement in 1950 that the financial information is insufficient for
reliable estimate^90 still holds good. Arakcheyev reported expenditure of 13.
million roubles during the quinquennium 1818-23, explaining that earli
allocations had gone unrecorded.^91 He also claimed that two-thirds of this w;
85 Petrov, 'Ustroystvo', pp. 163-8.
86 Storozhenko, • lz zapisok', pp. 447-8. 471-3.
87 For details see Ferguson, 'Se11lemems', pp. 211-13 and 'Se1tlements, 1825-66', p. 110.
88 Dreux-Brezi:, 'Notes recueillies ... [see fn. 321, f, 202.
s^9 This judgement accords broadly with that of Pipes.''Colonies', pp. 215-19, except that
cannot accept his contention that 'the military colonies were a planned rational society' fun<
mentally alien to the psychology of the Russian peasant, for whom 'the ultimate reward for.
labours is the prospect of leisure'. It \as precisely the iTTationality of the Prussian-style miliL
discipline imposed on them that caused resentment, and with good reason.
90 'Pipes, 'Colonies', p. 210.
91 Petrov, 'Ustroystvo', pp. 247-8.