Resistance, Repression, and Reform 317had done So had seen action in the field.^1 '}.4 A study of the Senate reveals a
similar picture: the ex-military contingent was 67 per cent in 1846-16 per cent
less than it had been 20 yca;s earlici. !a~ Om: former coionel who reached the
Senate in 1845 observed that 'in Russia it is the general fashion to look on
a senatorial appointment as a relaxation after many years of hard work' .106
The fundamental point, though, is that the armed-forces background of
those who held senior appointments was no longer characteristic of the civil
service as a whole. Pintner's study of personal service records shows that, of
entrants to central agencies in the top five ranks, the proportion with previous
military experience fell to 25 per cent in 1815-34 (as against 34 per cent in
1795-1814); by 1855, he concludes, the military had 'ceased to be predominant
in numbers even at the top, where they were once most heavily concentrated'
and 'the overwhelming majority of minor officials in the provinces was com-
posed of lifetime civil servants'.^107 These men were as a rule better educated
than their ex-military colleagues, and the differential between them was grow-
ing wider.
What this meant in terms of outlook is still not entirely clear. The general
cultural level of provincial civilian officials was notoriously low,^108 but one
cannot automatically write off all ex-officers as more ignorant or brutal than
their civilian counterparts. After all, liberal and nationalist ideas had first
struck root in their milieu. But under Nicholas I officers with such views were
deemed potentially disloyal; if they obtained responsible posts in the civil
administration they had to keep their sentiments to themselves or else risk
a great deal of unpleasantness. The experiences of I. I. Venediktov are instruc-
tive in this regard. As a military cadet around 1850 he acquired what he
describes cautiously in his memoirs as 'new sentiments', and instead of joining
a guards regiment on graduation opted for a post in the Ministry of the
Interior. He found that the road construction department was managed on
military lines: 'I beheld row upon row of tables, behind which were in-
numerable officials. Right in front a stern-looking gentleman sat bowed over
some papers. To one side lay huge sealed bundles, each bearing a label. These
were birch rods designed for administering disciplinary punishments [to the
clerks].' The ministry's atmosphere was painfully similar to the one he had
sought to avoid.^109
Probably most officials with a military background were 'men of the old
school' who applied mechanically the norms of conduct they had learned in
104 Lincoln, 'Ministers', p. 313; id., Nicholas I, p. 164.
JOI Wortman, Legal Consciousness, p. 57; for the State Council, see W. B. Lincoln. "The Com-
position of the Imperial Russian State Council under Nicholas I', CASS IO ( 1976), pp. 369-81 and
D. Field, in Kritika 15 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), p. 124.
106 Von Bradke, 'Avtobiogr. zapiski', p. 289.
107 Pintner, 'Evolution', pp. 212, 214.
10s It is a cliche to cite Gogol" on this point; see now the scathing comments in the same spirit of
Zayonchkovsky, Prav. apparat, pp. 143-60.
109 Venediktov, 'Za 60 let', p. 128.