by Riazanovsky
administrative apparatus. In contrast to Catherine the Great and Paul, Alexander I brought these problems up for consideration, although, as we shall see, the tangible results of his efforts proved to be slight. The reign of Alexander I contained two liberal periods, from 1801 to 1805 and from 1807 to 1812, each, incidentally, followed by war with France.
The first period of reform, following immediately upon Alexander I's acquisition of the crown, was the most far-ranging in purpose and the most hopeful. The new emperor decided to transform Russia with the help of four young, cultivated, intelligent, and liberal friends, the so-called Unofficial Committee. The members of the committee, Nicholas Novosiltsev, Count Paul Stroganov, Count Victor Kochubey, and a Polish patriot Prince Adam Czartoryski, reflected the enlightened opinion of the period, ranging from Anglophilism to Jacobin connections. While they could not be classified as radicals or hotheads, the four did represent a new departure after Paul's administration. The emperor spoke of them jokingly as his "Committee of Public Safety," a reference to the French Revolution which would have made his predecessors shudder. He met with the committee informally and frequently, often daily over coffee.
Our information about the work of the Unofficial Committee - which includes Stroganov's notes on the meetings - suggests that at first Alexander I intended to abolish autocracy and serfdom. However, the dangers and difficulties associated with these issues, as well as the unpreparedness for reform of the administration and the mass of people, quickly became apparent. Serfdom represented, so to speak, the greatest single interest in the empire, and its repeal was bound to affect the entire Russian society, in particular the extremely important gentry class. As to autocracy, the emperor himself, although at one time he had spoken of a republic, hesitated in practice to accept any diminution of his authority. Characteristically, he became disillusioned and impatient with the proceedings and called the Unofficial Committee together less and less frequently. The war of 1805 marked the conclusion of its activities. Russia, thus, went un-regenerated and unreformed. Even more limited projects such as the proclamation of a Russian charter of rights failed to be translated into practice.
Although the grand scheme of reform failed, the first years of Alexander's reign witnessed the enactment of some important specific measures. For example, the Senate was restored, or perhaps promoted, to a very high position in the state: it was to be the supreme judicial and administrative institution in the empire, and its decrees were to carry the authority of those of the sovereign, who alone could stop their execution. Peter the Great's colleges, which had a checkered and generally unhappy history in the eighteenth century, were gradually replaced in 1802 and subsequent years by ministries, with a single minister in charge of each. At first there were eight: the ministries of war, navy, foreign affairs, justice, interior, finance,
commerce, and education. Later the ministry of commerce was abolished, and the ministry of police appeared.
The government even undertook some limited social legislation. In 1801 the right to own estates was extended from the gentry to other free Russians. In 1803 the so-called "law concerning the free agriculturists" went into effect. It provided for voluntary emancipation of the serfs by their masters, assuring that the emancipated serfs would be given land and establishing regulations and courts to secure the observance of all provisions. The newly emancipated serfs were to receive in many respects the status of state peasants, but, by contrast with the latter, they were to enjoy stronger property rights and exemption from certain obligations. Few landlords, however, proved eager to free their peasants. To be more exact, under the provisions of the law concerning the free agriculturists from the time of its enactment until its suspension more than half a century later on the eve of "the great reforms," 384 masters emancipated 115,734 working male serfs together with their families. It may be added that Druzhinin and other Soviet scholars have disproved the frequently made assertion that Alexander I gave no state peasants, with state lands, into private ownership and serfdom.
Russian backwardness and ignorance became strikingly apparent to the monarch and his Unofficial Committee as they examined the condition of the country. Education, therefore, received a high priority in the official plans and activities of the first years of the reign. Fortunately too this effort did not present quite the dangers and obstacles that were associated with the issues of serfdom and autocracy. Spending large sums of money on education for the first time in Russian history, Alexander I founded several universities to add to the University of Moscow, forty-two secondary schools, and considerable numbers of other schools. While education in Russia during the first half of the nineteenth century will be discussed in a later chapter, it should be noted here that Alexander I's establishment of institutions of learning and his entire school policy were distinctly liberal for his time. Indeed, they have been called the best fruits of the monarch's usually hesitant and brittle liberalism.
The second period of reform in Alexander I's reign, 1807-12, corresponded to the French alliance and was dominated by the emperor's most remarkable assistant, Michael Speransky. Speransky, who lived from 1772 to 1839, was fully a self-made man. In contrast to the members of the Unofficial Committee as well as to most other associates of the sovereign, he came not from the aristocracy but from poor village clergy. It was Speransky's intelligence, ability to work, and outstanding administrative capacity that made him for a time Alexander I's prime minister in fact, if not in name, for no such formal office then existed. As most specialists on Speransky believe, that unusual statesman sought to establish in Russia
strong monarchy firmly based on law and legal procedure, and thus free from arbitrariness, corruption, and confusion. In other words, Speransky found his inspiration in the vision of a Rechtsstaat, not in advanced liberal or radical schemes. Still, Raeff, the latest major author on the subject, goes too far when he denies that the Russian statesman was at all liberal. In Russian conditions Speransky's views were certainly liberal, as his contemporaries fully realized. Furthermore, they could have been developed more liberally, if the opportunities had presented themselves.
In 1809, at the emperor's request, Speransky submitted to him a thorough proposal for a constitution. In his customary methodical manner, the statesman divided the Russians into three categories: the gentry; people of "the middle condition," that is, merchants, artisans, and peasants or other small proprietors who owned property of a certain value; and, finally, working people, including serfs, servants, and apprentices. The plan also postulated three kinds of rights: general civil rights; special civil rights, such as exemption from service; and political rights, which depended on a property qualification. The members of the gentry were to enjoy all the rights. Those belonging to the middle group received general civil rights and political rights when they could meet the property requirement. The working people too obtained general civil rights, but they clearly did not own enough to participate in politics. Russia was to be reorganized on four administrative levels: the volost - a small unit sometimes translated as "canton" or "township" - the district, the province, and the country at large. On each level there were to be the following institutions: legislative assemblies - or dumy - culminating in the state duma for all of Russia; a system of courts, with the Senate at the apex; and administrative boards, leading eventually to the ministries and the central executive power. The state duma, the most intriguing part of Speransky's system, showed the statesman's caution, for in addition to the property restriction imposed on its electorate, it depended on a sequence of indirect elections. The assemblies of the volosti elected the district assemblymen, who elected the provincial assemblymen, who elected the members of the state duma, or national assembly. Also the activities of the state duma were apparently to be rather narrowly restricted. But, on the other hand, the state duma did provide for popular participation in the legislative process. That, together with Speransky's insistence on the division of functions, strict legality, and certain other pro
visions such as the popular election of judges, if successfully applied, would have in time transformed Russia. Indeed, it has been observed that Speransky's fourfold proposal of local self-government and a national legislative assembly represented a farsighted outline of the Russian future. Only that future took extremely long to materialize, offering - in the opinion of many specialists - a classic example of too little and too late. Thus Russia received district and provincial self-government
by the so-called zemstvo reform of 1864, a national legislature, the Duma, in 1905-06, and volost self-government in 1917.
In 1809 and the years following, Alexander I failed to implement Speransky's proposal. The statesman's fall from power in 1812 resulted from the opposition of officialdom and the gentry evoked by his measures and projects in administration and finance, from the emperor's fears, suspicions, and vacillations, and also from the break with Napoleon, Speransky having been branded a Francophile. Although Speransky was later to return to public office and accomplish further useful and important work, he never again had the opportunity to suggest fundamental reform on the scale of his plan of 1809. The second liberal period of Alexander I's reign, then, like the first, produced no basic changes in Russia.
Yet, again like the first, the second liberal period led to some significant legislation of a more limited nature. In 1810, on the advice of Speransky - actually this was the only part of the statesman's plan that the monarch translated into practice - Alexander I created the Council of State modeled after Napoleon's Conseil d'Etat, with Speransky attached to it as the Secretary of State. This body of experts appointed by the sovereign to help him with the legislative work in no way limited the principle of autocracy; moreover, the Council tended to be extremely conservative. Still, it clearly reflected the emphasis on legality, competence, and correct procedure so dear to Speransky. And, as has been noted for the subsequent history of the Russian Empire, whereas "all the principal reforms were passed by regular procedure through the Council of State, nearly all the most harmful and most mischievous acts of succeeding governments were, where possible, withdrawn from its competence and passed only as executive regulations which were nominally temporary." Speransky also reorganized the ministries and added two special agencies to the executive, one for the supervision of government finance, the other for the development of transport. A system of annual budgets was instituted, and other financial measures were proposed and in part adopted. Perhaps still more importantly, Speransky did yeoman's service in strengthening Russian bureaucracy by introducing something in the nature of a civil service examination and trying in other ways to emphasize merit and efficient organization.
Speransky's constitutional reform project represented the most outstanding but not the only such plan to come out of government circles in the reign of Alexander I. One other should be noted here, that of Novosiltsev. Novosiltsev's Constitutional Charter of the Russian Empire emphasized very heavily the position and authority of the sovereign and bore strong resemblance to Speransky's scheme in its stress on legality and rights and its narrowly based and weak legislative assembly. Novosiltsev differed, however, from Speransky's rigorous centralism in allowing something to the federal principle: he wanted the Russian Empire, including Finland and
Russian Poland, to be divided into twelve large groups of provinces which were to enjoy a certain autonomy. The date of Novosiltsev's project deserves attention: its second and definitive version was presented to Alexander I in 1820, late in his reign. Furthermore, the monarch not only graciously accepted the plan, but - it has been argued - proceeded to implement it in small part. Namely, by combining several provinces, he created as a model one of the twelve units proposed by Novosiltsev. Only after Alexander I's death in 1825 was Novosiltsev's scheme completely abandoned, and the old system of administration re-established in the experimental provinces. The story of Novosiltsev's Charter, together with certain other developments, introduces qualifications into the usual sharp division of Alexander I's reign into the liberal first half and the reactionary second half, and suggests that a constitution remained a possible alternative for Russia as long as "the enigmatic tsar" presided over its destinies.
Russian Foreign Policy, 1801-12
While the first part of Alexander's rule witnessed some significant developments in internal affairs, it was the emperor's foreign policy that came to occupy the center of the stage. Diplomacy and war in the early years of Alexander I's reign culminated in the cataclysmic events of 1812.
At the beginning of Alexander's reign, peaceful intentions prevailed. After succeeding Paul, who had both fought France and later joined it against Great Britain, the new emperor proclaimed a policy of neutrality. Yet Russia could not long stay out of conflicts raging in Europe. A variety of factors, ranging from the vast and exposed Western frontier of the empire to the psychological involvement of the Russian government and educated public in European affairs, determined Russian participation in the straggle. Not surprisingly, Alexander I joined the opponents of France. Economic ties with Great Britain, and traditional Russian friendship with Austria and Great Britain, together with the equally traditional hostility to France, contributed to the decision. Furthermore, Alexander I apparently came early to consider Napoleon as a menace to Europe, all the more so because the Russian sovereign had his own vision of a new European order. An outline of the subsequent Holy Alliance and concert of Europe, without the religious coloration, can be found in the instructions issued in 1804 to the Russian envoy in Great Britain.
The War of the Third Coalition broke out in 1805 when Austria, Russia, and Sweden joined Great Britain against France and its ally, Spain. The combined Austrian and Russian armies suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Napoleon on December 2, 1805, at Austerlitz. Although Austria was knocked out of the war, the Russians continued to fight and in 1806 even obtained a new ally, Prussia. But the French armies, in a
nineteenth-century version of the Blitzkrieg, promptly destroyed the Prussian forces in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, and, although they could not destroy the Russians, finally succeeded in inflicting a major defeat on them at Friedland. The treaties of Tilsit between France and Russia and France and Prussia followed early in July 1807. The Franco-Prussian settlement reduced Prussia to a second-rate power, saved from complete destruction by the insistence of the Russian sovereign. The agreement between France and Russia was a different matter, for, although Alexander I had to accept Napoleon's redrawing of the map of Europe and even had to support him, notably against Great Britain, Russia emerged as the hegemon of much of eastern Europe and the only major power on the continent other than France.
It was the temporary settlement with France that allowed the Russians to fight several other opponents and expand the boundaries of the empire in the first half of Alexander's reign. In 1801 the eastern part of Georgia, an ancient Orthodox country in Transcaucasia, joined Russia, and Russian sway was extended to western Georgia in 1803-10. Hard-pressed by their powerful Moslem neighbors, the Persians and the Turks, the Georgians had repeatedly asked and occasionally received Russian aid. The annexation of Georgia to Russia thus represented in a sense the culmination of a process, and a logical, if by no means ideal, choice for the little Christian nation. It also marked the permanent establishment of Russian authority and power beyond the great Caucasian mountain range.
As expected, the annexation of Georgia by Russia led to a Russo-Persian war, fought from 1804 to 1813. The Russians proved victorious, and by the Treaty of Gulistan Persia had to recognize Russian rule in Georgia and cede to its northern neighbor the areas of Daghestan and Shemakha in the Caucasus. The annexation of Georgia also served as one of the causes of the Russo-Turkish war which lasted from 1806 to 1812. Again, Russian troops, this time led by Kutuzov, scored a number of successes. The Treaty of Bucharest, hastily concluded by Kutuzov on the eve of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, added Bessarabia and a strip on the eastern coast of the Black Sea to the empire of the Romanovs, an
d also granted Russia extensive rights in the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Finally, in 1808-09 Alexander I fought and defeated Sweden, with the result that the Peace of Frederikshamn gave Finland to Russia. Finland became an autonomous grand duchy with the Russian emperor as its grand duke.
The first half of Alexander's reign also witnessed a continuation of Russian expansion in North America, which had started in Alaska in the late eighteenth century. New forts were built not only in Alaska but also in northern California, where Fort Ross was erected in 1812.
1812
The days of the Russian alliance with Napoleon were numbered. The agreement that the two emperors reached in Tilsit in 1807, and which was renewed at their meeting in Erfurt in 1808, failed in the long run to satisfy either side. The Russians, who were forced to accept it because of their military defeat, resented Napoleon's domination of the continent, his disregard of Russian interests, and, in particular, the obligation to participate in the so-called continental blockade. That blockade, meant to eliminate all commerce between Great Britain and other European countries and to strangle the British economy, actually helped Russian manufactures, especially in the textile industry, by excluding British competition. But it did hurt Russian exporters and thus the powerful landlord class. Russian military reverses at the hands of the French cried for revenge, especially because they came after a century of almost uninterrupted Russian victories. Also, Napoleon, who had emerged from the fearful French Revolution, who had upset the legitimate order in Europe on an unprecedented scale, and who had even been denounced as Antichrist in some Russian propaganda to the masses, appeared to be a peculiar and undesirable ally. Napoleon and his lieutenants, on their part, came to regard Russia as an utterly unreliable partner and indeed as the last major obstacle to their complete domination of the continent.