294 The Alilitary Seulements
CO\ered by 'savings', but this was false reckoning since it involved simply a
book-keeping transfer from one disbursing agency to another.^92 His former
figure corresponds roughly with his original estimate of 350,000 roubles as the
co~t of sc-tili1ig 011c: uaLLaiiun;^93 bur it is not consistent with his calculation one
year later of a total outlay of 10.8 million roubles.^9 .i Confusion arose in part
from a failure to distinguish between capital and current expenditure, and
both sums are certainly too low, especially._when administrators' salaries are
induded. On the other hand it would be. misleading to equate costs with the
capital accumulated in the various settlement funds, which in January 1825
totalled 20. 9 million roubles,^95 for some of this was generated locally or came
out of the men's own pockets. But this may give us an approximate order of
magnitude, whereas a French estimate (1826) of 34.3 million roubles is perhaps
on the high side.^96
What did the governmem get for its money? Here we are entirely in the
dark, since there are no figures on the amount or value of the settlements' out-
put. Nor do we know how much was sold on the market or delivered to the
troops. Even in the less impoverished south such deliveries accounted for only
half the army's requirements in 1827.^97 Ferguson (who did not use the French
papers) holds that by that year 'enough self-support was being achieved to save
the state treasury almost as much money as was being put into the project' ,^98
but this seems uncertain. How much was normally paid to the army's supply
contractors, and what did the government lose in tax revenue? Officials were
loath to discuss such questions. Their attitude was much like that of land-
owners at the time who believed that their serfs' unpaid labour brought them
nothing but clear profit.^99
Yet curiously economic advantages, real or supposed, seem to have loomed
larger in the planners' minds than defence considerations. This was the reverse
of the situation on the Austrian Militiirgrenze (to say nothing of the Prussian
Landwehr). The Polish critic Tanski noted that 'there is a big difference bet-
ween this [Russian] code and the one which governs the regiments on the
Austrian border. There at least one finds the rudiments of natural and civil
law, whereas in Russia the will of the bosses [chefs] constitutes the law.'^100 The
military settlements turned into a caricature of their founder's benevolent
intentions. They produced, not a force of self-reliant reservists, but a mass of
helots toiling under the lash of a self-serving military bureaucracy. This effort
92 Storozhenko, 'lz zapisok', p. 469.
9J Petrov, 'Ustro~·stvo', p. 219; cf. p. 175.
·~~ Ferguson, 'Settlements', p. 180.
9~ Ibid., p. 176.
% 'Etat de frais pour les colonies militaires', Mar. 1826, MAE, Met D, Russie 27 (1819-27),
f. 78.
,, La Ferronays to de Damas, 22 Apr. 1827, ibid., f. 220v.
·» Ferguson, 'Settlements', p. 182.
ri Coniino, Domaines, pp. 265-70.
:uo Tanski, Tableau, pp. 134, 151; for other comparisons, Marmom, Voyage, i. 226 and (for
the eighteenth century) Ferguson, 'Land-militia', pp. 151-8.
wang
(Wang)
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