Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace
Page 24
The Reforms of 1808–9 and their Critics
Alexander saw Speransky’s chief task in 1808 as the modernization of the structure of Tsardom, in much the same way as his new Italian architects were remodelling the outer fabric of palaces first erected half a century ago. He did not want Speransky or anybody else to institute some dramatically radical upheaval, but rather to shepherd the State through a series of gradual innovations. If Speransky could unravel the complexities of accumulated legal confusion and substitute for them civil and commercial codes for all the provinces of the Empire, so much the better; but, above all, Alexander wished him to concentrate on ways of sparing his ministers the chronic embarrassment of crippling financial crises.12 Speransky was to be the Colbert of Russia, building up her strength as a world power by calculated plans for economic development and seeing to it that the abilities of her administrators were harnessed in a rational system of advancement. The phrases – like the problems – were familiar: but there is no reason to believe that in reverting to them Alexander was assuming a hypocritical pose. Balanced budgets, codified laws, efficient government were as much in the interests of the Tsar as of his people, provided of course that no well-meaning reformer was rash enough to fetter the sovereign’s authority.
Speransky’s plans were more ambitious than his actual achievements (at least during the reign of Alexander). They always looked impressive on paper. He wished to define the precise limits of the legislative, administrative and judicial functions of government, believing that a clear separation of powers was a safeguard against irresponsible tyranny and therefore a guarantee of stable progress for the community as a whole. Although he insisted that the legislative initiative must remain with the Tsar and a Council of State nominated by the sovereign, he foresaw a pyramid of elected representative assemblies in central and local administration, primarily advisory in character. He proposed a gradual transition from the autocratic oligarchical constitution of the eighteenth century to what he personally termed the ‘monarchical government’ of western Europe, although he seems to have had primarily in his mind the new Napoleonic structure of France.13 As a specialist in financial matters he also drew up a comprehensive scheme which was intended to base the Russian taxation system upon the agricultural wealth of the country while at the same time proposing a uniform method of governmental accountancy, related to an annual budget approved by the Tsar and the Council of State. Finally, in his capacity as Assistant Minister of Justice, Speransky presided over meetings of a commission which sought to replace the confused mass of Russian laws by a single code inspired by the revolutionary models of the Napoleonic Empire and, to a lesser extent, by enlightened reforms in Prussia and Austria.14
Alexander was intensely interested in each of these projects and Speransky himself calculated that in 1809 he held ‘perhaps a hundred talks and discussions’ with the Tsar, amplifying and explaining his memoranda, occasionally modifying his views.15 Almost every morning when Alexander was in residence at the Winter Palace, Speransky was summoned for an audience. Occasionally, too, he dined privately with the Tsar on Kammionyi Island although he took no part in the ceremonial functions of government, fading more and more into the background as his influence and importance increased.* Alexander’s own notions of enlightened absolutism made him naturally receptive to many of Speransky’s proposals. Neither man was ever a ‘liberal’ in the western European or American sense of the term. Whenever the Tsar failed to understand a problem, he applied to it a militaristic appraisal: if he saw a solution which was orderly, rational and based upon a hierarchical structure of command and responsibility, he believed in it; if it showed excessive originality or independence and stressed rights rather than obligations, he distrusted it. Since Speransky favoured government by strict regulation and decree his attitude of mind made him put forward ideas which Alexander found, for the most part, readily acceptable. There were no basic differences of principle between the two men. It was only when Speransky tried to translate ideas into legislative acts that the Tsar began to suspect his right-hand man was alienating all the social classes of Russia at one and the same time: and his political instincts placed him on guard against mounting opposition.
Like most autocrats, Alexander was reluctant to delegate matters of substance even after he had approved the terms of reference for any particular sub-committee. To some extent, the experience of 1802–3 was repeated in 1809–10: Alexander insisted to Speransky (as earlier he had to Stroganov and Novosiltsov) that he should be consulted over everything, however trivial; and decisions were thus postponed over questions of importance simply because the Tsar needed more time to weigh their significance. It is, of course, true that Speransky was attempting to formulate a new system at a time of chronic crisis for Europe as a whole and therefore Alexander could never concentrate on domestic affairs to the exclusion of diplomatic and military questions. Moreover, occasionally Alexander certainly used these other problems as an excuse for procrastination, especially if he saw that a particular reform was likely to arouse opposition from the conservatives at his Court, with the Dowager Empress and the Grand Duchess Catherine as their champions. Speransky found – again as Stroganov had done – that Alexander’s vacillations of mood made him a difficult master, one who at times could drive any minister into the depths of despair: ‘He is too weak to rule and too strong to be ruled,’ Speransky once complained in a fit of exasperation.16 Yet, at least until the autumn of 1811, Speransky continued to enjoy Alexander’s confidence in a way which his old friends on the Secret Committee had never known; and, although most of his projects were left unsanctioned, he achieved more in his brief spell as the Tsar’s principal adviser than any other reformer in Russia during the first half of the nineteenth century.
*
The range of Speransky’s reforms illustrates clearly the extent to which Alexandrine Russia was still only superficially westernized. Most of the Tsar’s earliest confidants – Czartoryski, Paul Stroganov, Novosiltsov and even the young idealist Karamzin – had emphasized to Alexander the urgent necessity for improving the educational structure of his Empire, and it was a task to which he gave serious attention throughout the first decade of his reign. Speransky was placed by the Tsar on a commission which he established in the winter of 1807–8 to propose legislation for modernizing the curriculum of the Church schools in Russia, and in the following year he was made a formal Administrator of (secular) Schools. Speransky’s educational reforms coincided closely with the earlier ideas of Kochubey, who wrote to his former protegé, ‘It is not universities, especially universities on the German model, that we need when there is no one to study at them; what we need are primary and secondary schools.’17 In June 1808 Speransky was largely responsible for drafting a law which served as the basic regulation for ecclesiastical schools until the eve of the Revolution and he played an active part in encouraging the Orthodox dioceses to set up educational institutions in the more remote regions rather than merely concentrating them around St Petersburg and Moscow. Speransky himself subsequently claimed to have drawn up the statutes for the famous school which Alexander established in 1811 at Tsarskoe Selo on the model of the French lycées (an institution fortunate enough to include in its foundation class of thirty boys the twelve-year-old Alexander Pushkin); and, although other civil servants are officially credited with organizing the Tsarskoe Selo Litsei, it is known that Speransky prepared for Alexander a paper on the educational principles involved in secondary school teaching of this type.18 His plea for recognition of the need to mould character rather than merely to convey factual knowledge shows clearly enough what both the Tsar and his minister had in mind – the creation of an intellectual élite who would give guidance and moral leadership to the next generation of Russians in Church and State. Yet even these activities of Speransky won him enemies: traditionalists maintained that the only appropriate education for men of quality in Russian life was at military academies, such as Catherine II’s Land Cadet Corps
College and the school for artillery cadets; and there was also a powerful Roman Catholic group among the nobility (which originated with emigrés like Joseph de Maistre) who had already established a Jesuit school in St Petersburg and who maintained that the Litsei was a dangerous source of rationalistic ideas from abroad, alien to every good Russian.19
Alexander took little notice of these criticisms. He also supported two decrees, drafted by Speransky in April and August 1809, which swept aside cherished privileges permitting the more rapid advancement of members of the nobility within the civil service and insisted that applicants for the higher ranks of state services should be appointed only after sitting for a written examination.20 In spirit both of these measures fulfilled earlier ideas of Peter the Great, and Alexander thought they made good sense. They aroused, however, furious indignation among the aristocracy, especially those who were seeking to promote the interests of their sons by careers in the administration at St Petersburg. Many members of the petty nobility still on the lower rungs of the social ladder were now prevented from climbing to greater eminence by the awkward fact that they could never pass an examination in Russian and mathematics, let alone in such strict disciplines as French and Latin (a subject of particular complaint). Only a priest’s son who had risen from the very dust of Vladimir would, it was felt, seek to mortify honest Russians in such a way. Once again Speransky had stirred up that xenophobic patriotism which was never far below the surface in Russian minds.
Grand Duchess Catherine left her brother in no doubt of the hostility aroused by these decrees; and Alexander became uneasy.21 He had already taken the first steps to implement some of Speransky’s constitutional proposals and his financial plan. But in the closing quarter of 1809 the Tsar lapsed into caution. Although he had insisted Speransky should keep both his ultimate objectives and his palliative measures strictly secret, alarming reports of pending changes were circulating in St Petersburg; and there were even more fantastic rumours in Moscow and among the landowners on the great estates around the old capital.22 Hence Alexander resolved he would first establish Speransky’s proposed Council of State, a nominated body whose members would subsequently initiate and consider the drafts of all laws and statutes before submitting them for final sanction to the sovereign. By this means it would, of course, be possible for the Council of State jointly to accept responsibility for financial measures which everyone realized were bound to be unpopular. Despite the mounting criticism of Speransky, Alexander had no wish to see so able a civil servant hounded out of office by conservative landowners.
There had already been several State Councils in the modern history of Russia: a small inner body of nine under Catherine the Great; an Imperial Council to assist Paul to draft legislation; and an inaptly named Permanent Council, established by Alexander at his accession, to advise him ‘on important state affairs’.23 Moreover, in September 1802, it will be remembered Alexander had enthusiastically instituted a Committee of Ministers, whose functions were also purely advisory and tended, after Austerlitz, to be replaced by special commissions which were given specific tasks by the sovereign. The new Council of State was to be more highly organized than any of its predecessors and was to have direct supervision of the most important aspects of governmental business. There would be, within the Council, subordinate departmental councils which would review the work of the Ministries; and the whole Council itself was assisted by a Chancellery headed by a State Secretary (Speransky himself). Since the State Secretary was to co-ordinate the work of the various departmental councils and supervise all the drafting operations for the Council of State, his position was one of real power even if the last word over all decisions rested with the Council’s President, the Tsar.24
Alexander discussed the final form of the Council of State with only four other dignitaries besides Speransky, and his choice of confidants is significant. First among them was Kochubey, a friend since the last year of his grandmother’s reign and a former member of the Secret Committee as well as Minister of the Interior. Then there was General Saltykov, Alexander’s moral tutor when he was a boy; and Rumiantsev, the Foreign Minister, who was accorded the title of Chancellor in the autumn of 1809, partly because Alexander wished to acknowledge his long service to the State and partly to reassure the French, who regarded him as the principal champion of Franco-Russian friendship at the Tsar’s Court. Finally Alexander consulted Prince Lopukhin, an elderly member of the Senate, naturally conservative in temperament.25 They agreed that the Council would be established on the Russian New Year’s Day of 1810 and that the Tsar himself should open its first session with fitting pomp and ceremonial.
There was, however, one person in St Petersburg of considerable importance whom Alexander virtually ignored. General Arakcheev had improved his reputation as an administrator in two years as Minister of War; and the Tsar personally paid tribute to his services in the war against Sweden; but he never took him into his confidence.26 With rumours circulating that the military administration was to be subject to civil control, Arakcheev naturally asked the Tsar for information and found him sympathetic and conciliatory. He promised that, before the proposed reform was made public, the General would be consulted.
On 24 December by the Russian Calendar (5 January 1810 in western Europe) Arakcheev was informed the Tsar would send for him that evening. The General waited at his house in Liteiny Prospect for a summons to the palace, less than a mile away across the snow-muffled squares. At last, very late, a visitor arrived. It was Speransky, sent by Alexander to explain to the War Minister what the reforms were all about. Arakcheev felt slighted and lost his temper. Ten minutes later Speransky made a hurried departure, leaving memoranda for the minister to study. As soon as conditions permitted, Arakcheev set out for his estate at Gruzino, furious with Speransky, indignant at his own treatment by Alexander, and determined to resign.27
There followed an exchange of letters between the General and his sovereign which reveals much about each man’s character. Arakcheev began by explaining that he had read through the documents left by Speransky but did not feel competent to comment on the reasoning behind them. He continued:
Sire, you know the kind of education I received in my youth … I feel that, at my age, I am no more than a competent officer, able to administer correctly our military affairs … In order to put your wise proposals into effect, you need a minister who has received a comprehensive and general education. Only a man with this background will be of use to this important new institution and able to uphold the first military responsibility in the State which I assume to be defence of the Council itself, since without military defence the best provisions made by the Council may be frustrated. I cannot do this, Sire, and since I am not able adequately to fufill these duties, I would be a discredit [as Minister].28
Alexander wrote a frank reply:
For what reasons must I search in order to see why you intend to leave the post you occupy? … I cannot accept your explanation … Nobody will understand it. Everyone who has read the new proposals finds that the Council will be good for the Empire. Only you, on whose co-operation I especially relied and who have so often said that apart from a sense of duty to the nation you are moved by personal affection for myself, only you … hasten to give up the duties you direct at a time when your conscience must be telling you how impossible it will be to replace you. If you ask yourself sincerely what your real motive is, and are honest with yourself, you will not be proud of it …29
Naturally, after such a stern missive, Arakcheev could not retire into the country. Alexander offered him the choice of remaining Minister of War or of becoming Chairman of the Military Department in the Council of State; and Arakcheev, believing that the Council would ultimately control the ministries, chose the new Military Department. He was soon to find he had made a mistake. The Council proved too cumbersome to function smoothly in an emergency; and, under the threat of another war it was Arakcheev’s successor as Minister, General Barclay de To
lly, who decided how the army should meet this gravest of all challenges.
The Council of State at Work
When Alexander stood godfather to Speransky’s brain-child he certainly intended the Council to share the burden of administrative responsibility. The Empress Elizabeth twice mentioned his desire to make innovations in letters to her mother, though she was commenting on relaxations in Court etiquette and ceremonial rather than in government.30 It is as though he felt the whole machinery of state needed overhauling; and there is no doubt he would have welcomed ways of shedding irksome tasks, provided nothing encroached on his autocratic prerogative. For the first half of 1810 the new system worked well enough. The Council cleared the agenda Speransky drew up with astonishing rapidity. Within five weeks the first decrees on financial reform were sealed and published; and, although it took another four months to float a domestic loan and to stabilize the values of silver and copper, Speransky was optimistic he would be able to check what would now be called the ‘galloping inflation’ of the Russian economy. Work began anew on codification of the laws and some progress was made in defining the delicate relationship between the departments of the Council and the various ministries. With Alexander’s approval, the Council moved on to other questions: the need to set up a new government agency to develop transport and internal commerce; and proposals for the eventual establishment of a Ministry of Police, which would safeguard the life and property of individuals as well as maintaining the internal security of the State.31