In this new political architecture, the emperor would keep major powers: he would control the executive power by appointing ministers and heads of regional and local administration; he alone would decide on war and peace; he could resort to ordinances that would give him the partial right to initiate laws—but, importantly, he would have no judicial power anymore. To assist him, he would have a Council of State that would ensure communication between the three structures (duma, senate, ministries) and himself. Named by the emperor, members of this council would deal with the most important affairs of state. No law could be adopted without the joint agreement of the Council of State and the duma, which would amount to a sharing of legislative power.
Once the central level was in place, this tripartite structure would be reproduced throughout the empire. Provincial governments17 would be subdivided into districts,18 which would be subdivided into communes.19 Everywhere, at governmental as well as regional and communal levels, there would be administrations, dumas, and tribunals. However, this uniformity would leave some regional specificities untouched: in zones populated with nonnatives—like Siberia, the Caucasus, and in the region of the Don—regions20 would have increased autonomy. This point must be stressed: in accepting a diversity of status that was linked to a diversity among peoples, Speransky’s scheme took into account the empire’s multinational character.
Fundamental rights would be recognized among a population that would henceforth be divided into three categories: the nobility, property owners who were not nobles (like merchants and businessmen), and non-owning workers (serfs, state peasants). All individuals would benefit from civil rights,21 there would be no punishment without a hearing—but only the first two social categories could participate in political life via a property-based right to vote.
In addition to his description of institutions to build, Speransky’s plan included a precise timetable: on January 1, 1810, the Council of State should hold its first meeting; in the course of that month the new ministries of finance and treasury would be created, followed in February by the police; on May 1, an imperial manifesto would convene an assembly that would be in charge of officially adopting the new legal code, the assembly would be transformed into the state duma on August 15, and would begin to meet on September 1, 1810. Speransky definitely intended to be a methodical, rigorous, and rapid reformer!
Along with this heavy task, Speransky tackled in a more peripheral way a reform of the seminaries, which reveals the scope of his interests. He increased the share of generalist education in the curriculum—including history and ancient languages—and suppressed corporal punishment. His plan was to make these seminaries the training grounds for the small and medium local bureaucracy.
Finally, he was charged by the emperor with reflecting on the nature of the administration to be set up in Finland. In April 1808 an imperial manifesto had annexed Finland, and this decision was ratified a year later by the peace of Hamina in September 1809. So the establishment of a new administrative and political architecture was a matter of urgency. The annexation of Finland by the Russian Empire put an end to a situation that was 600 years old. Since the Middle Ages Finland had in fact been an integral part of the kingdom of Sweden, and its elites spoke Swedish. But, as a result of the deals made at Tilsit and Erfurt, in 1808–1809, it suffered a brutal invasion by Russia, then an annexation that made the Finnish elites very worried about the tsar’s political objectives.
To take the measure of the local situation, Alexander and Speransky went to Finland; in the shadows Speransky again began an immense project to orchestrate imperial goals in that country. In February 1809 Alexander convened in Porvoo the Finnish estates—nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie, free peasantry (there was no serfdom in Finland)—which were constituted into a diet. On March 27, 1809, he declared to it, in a speech prepared by Speransky: “I have promised to maintain your constitution, your fundamental laws—and your gathering here guarantees my promise. This meeting will be a landmark in your political existence.”22 And he ended by saying (arousing the enthusiasm of the Finns): “Henceforth Finland will have its place among the nations.”23
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Historians have wondered about the meaning of the tsar’s benevolent policy with respect to Finland. Some have insisted on military factors; others point to political considerations. It is certain that Alexander demonstrated pragmatism in his approach to the Finnish question: it was indeed less costly to rely on local elites rather than resort to Russian military force to secure imperial authority and Russian bureaucracy to administer the region.24 But, as a former student of Laharpe, he was also trying to use Finland (as previously he had used the Ionian Islands and later “his” Poland) as an experimental laboratory in order to spread through the Russian Empire ideas from the Enlightenment and constitutionalism—to which he remained attached. In 1811, while he was on the point of attaching to an autonomous Finland not only the territory acquired by Russia at the Peace of Abbo in 1743 but also the Vyborg government acquired by Peter the Great (this would be done in December), he told General Armfelt, about the political rights he had granted to Finland:
I swear that these forms please me more than the exercise of arbitrary power that has no other basis than my will, and which presupposes a principle of perfection in the sovereign—which is not present, alas, in all of humanity. Here, I cannot be wrong unless I want to be. [Here] all the lights are offered to me; there I am surrounded only by uncertainty and (almost always) the habits that have taken the place of laws. You will see how I think about that where there is a means of effecting a change in my States, since I am going incessantly to unite old Finland with your region and give it the same constitution and the same forms of freedom.25
In fact, the mode of governing Finland conceived in St. Petersburg in 1809 by Alexander I and Speransky appears as a compromise between some traits inherited from the Swedish administration and some innovations stamped with the Enlightenment seal.
The new structure would maintain the privileges of the estates, which had been established in their current form in the eighteenth century. The tsar touched neither the administration of provinces nor of rural areas; he did not challenge previously acquired municipal autonomy. He also retained the rights of the Lutheran Church, dispensed Finland from supplying military recruits, and authorized it to keep a small army.26 Finally, Finland kept its own customs, its bank, and its currency. Its privileged economic relations with Sweden were maintained and guaranteed by the peace of Hamina.27 Far from trying to wipe a slate clean of the practices inherited from the period of Swedish domination, the tsar was concerned to inscribe the new Russian domination within a historical continuum by respecting the sociopolitical rights that had been acquired. In parallel (and this is crucial), without asserting himself as a constitutional monarch, Alexander tried to manage Finland within respect for the existing law in force; for example, he would not raise taxes without having obtained the diet’s approval in advance. So, in fact, he was introducing into Finland a certain measure of national representation and constitutionalism—innovations without precedent in Russia. Still, we should not overestimate the scope of the concessions: while the respect for laws would be real, the role of the diet would remain symbolic. It was not reconvened until 1863!
To manage Finland, Alexander gave it a properly Finnish administration, and in this he distinguished himself from the Swedish heritage: there was no question of trying to “Russify” either administration or society. To lead this administration he set up in Turku a council of government composed of a dozen representatives of the estates, which would be renamed in 1816 the “Imperial Senate of Finland,” and then in 1819 transferred its seat to Helsinki, the new capital. However, the presidency of the governmental council was granted to a Russian, given the title of governor-general and commander in chief of the Russian armies. For this post, Alexander chose in April 1809 General Mikhail Barclay de Tolly. This was not a fortuitous choice: aged 47, faithful soldier of the ts
ar, of Scottish origin and a Lutheran by faith—his family had come to Lithuania in the seventeenth century—Barclay was considered by Alexander to have liberal principles28 and thus was particularly able to incarnate the spirit of openness and toleration necessary for the office of president of the Finnish Council. The dozen members of the council, divided into two sections (economic and legislative) were designated by the emperor for a fixed period, and their nomination did not depend on the estates, which were, however, to be represented on the council. Half the seats were reserved for the nobility and the other half for commoners, a system that allowed the Finns as a whole to take part in their administration by enlarging the national base to all social categories. This was a preoccupation dear to Speransky. Finally, back in St. Petersburg Alexander named a Finn to the post of Russian secretary of state to assist in Finnish matters, to adapt the affairs prepared by Russian ministers to Finnish legislation, and to transmit to Finland the imperial desiderata in matters of legislation.
These benevolent arrangements, which combined elements from the Swedish period with some innovations, soon secured significant political and social peace for the empire. We may call the Finnish policy of Alexander and Speransky a success. However, the results were clearly less convincing as regards the general reform of 1809.
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Upon reading the elaborate text prepared by Speransky, Alexander reacted positively, judging it both useful and satisfactory. On December 31 (O.S.), 1809, in accordance with Speransky’s timetable, he invited 35 senators to gather the next day at 8:30 in the morning in one of the halls of the Shepelev Palace, where at 9:00 he gave a speech that solemnly inaugurated the work of the Council of State and publicly confirmed his will to give the country a civil code.29 But the creation of this council and the plan as a whole, which had been kept secret from public opinion until the meeting that January 1, immediately encountered vigorous opposition.
First, even from within Alexander’s family entourage there was opposition. Today the archives of the Russian Federation have conserved a text little known by historians: the commentaries of Maria Feodorovna written in December 1809 in St. Petersburg in response to the document Alexander gave her for comment. This text is doubly interesting: First, because it attests once again to the immense confidence that, despite their frequent disagreements, continued to unite mother and son. While his marriage was collapsing and his passion for Maria Naryshkina was undergoing highs and lows (after 1809 they were unfaithful to each other, and the tsar had many passing affairs, including with a maid of honor to his sister Grand Duchess Catherine), his mother was an essential source of support and a key marker. Secondly, the document is important because Maria Feodorovna’s perspicacious analysis expresses doubts connected to a peculiarity of the Russian Empire that no reformer could sweep away:
The principle upon which the plan to give a particular body the right to deliberate and to propose new laws is based, seems eminently respectable, just, and well developed. But in a monarchic state like Russia, which has not known until now any other source of laws and new orders than the Sovereign’s will, by announcing so authentically a principle that seems—if not to remove this power from the Sovereign, then at least to limit it—it appears essential, in order not to offend and alter the general idea that the [illegible] has formed of the Sovereign’s authority, which appears so necessary in such a vast state where civilization is not yet generally widespread, therefore it appears essential, I say, that the nation remains persuaded that the emperor is not depriving himself of the power to dictate law when required by circumstances. In guaranteeing this opinion, it appears to me before God that this order of things, surveyed with vigilance and firmness, should lead to good.30
So for Maria Feodorovna (as for some members of the inner circle back in 1802–1803) the emperor, if he took into account the political immaturity in which Russia was mired, could not give up his legislative omnipotence.
At the same time, Speransky’s plan also encountered more instinctive and less reasoned opposition from a part of the administrative apparatus, starting with Arakcheev. On December 24 (O.S.), Arakcheev, who was irritated at having been kept ignorant of a plan he could only disapprove of, since it challenged the autocratic system, abruptly resigned from his duties as minister of war and inspector-general of infantry and artillery. He withdrew to his estate in Gruzino, from which he sent an ambiguous letter to his sovereign:
Your very gracious Majesty!
For fifteen years I have enjoyed your goodness, of which the papers [the plan] I received today are new testimony. […] I read them all before I left and I would never dare to understand them otherwise than by relating my own knowledge and strength to the rationale of these wise provisions.
Your Majesty! You know the limits of the education I received in my youth; to my misfortune, it was confined to textbooks given to me, which is why, at my age today, I feel I am nothing more than a good officer who can only watch over the scrupulous application of our military profession. […]
Today, to apply your wise provisions requires a man who has had a complete education in general matters. Only such a man would be useful in this important corporation that includes the military state, the foremost in the Empire.
I am incapable of assuming this task, Majesty. […] Do not be angry with a man who has lived fifty years without flattery, but instead relieve him of this charge.31
This letter does not refer to the political reform or the creation of the Council of State, but Alexander was not fooled by this omission, as illustrated by his vigorous and irritated response to his war minister:
To what should I attribute your intention to quit the office you occupy? […] All those who have read the regulations of the new council have found it useful for the good of the Empire. But you, from whom I expected the most help, you who have so often repeated that apart from your love of country, your sole motive was your personal attachment to me, you alone, despite these sentiments and forgetting the good of the Empire, you make haste to abandon the part that was entrusted to you—and at a time when your conscience cannot ignore how necessary and irreplaceable you are. […]
But allow me to leave aside the title I bear and speak to you as a man to whom I am personally attached and to whom I have demonstrated this attachment on every occasion. What effect will your departure produce on the public at a time when a reform so useful and agreeable to all will be installed in the government? This will certainly be for you the worse effect. […]
At a time when I should be expecting ardent and zealous help from all honest people who are attached to their country, you alone leave me, and preferring your personal vanity, supposedly wounded for the sake of the Empire, you are really harming your reputation this time.
At our next interview, you will tell me decidedly if I can still see in you the same Count Arakcheev, on whose attachment I can firmly count, or if I will have to choose a new minister of War.32
But Arakcheev firmly refused, and the tsar, not wanting to deprive himself of a collaborator whose devotion he rightly appreciated, ended up by appointing him (with his accord) president of the new department of military affairs at the Council of State, making Barclay de Tolly, until then governor-general of Finland, his new minister of war. And to seal their reconciliation, Alexander went so far as to offer Arakcheev at the New Year a magnificent sleigh drawn by a pair of superb horses.33
•••
Finally, there were some opponents who saw any reform that was liable to challenge autocratic power as a danger to the throne. This was the case for Joseph de Maistre and still more for the writer Nikolay Karamzin. At the start of 1811, at the request of Alexander’s sister Catherine Pavlovna, whose fief of Tver was one of the bastions of the conservative opposition, Karamzin delivered in the form of “A Memo on Ancient and Modern Russia,”34 a philosophical and historical reflection on the destiny of Russia, as well as a blistering attack on reforms that he saw as an illegitimate challenge to the autoc
ratic principle.
Faced with these many forms of opposition, the tsar did not yield. The new Council of State was indeed in place—its presidency was given to Chancellor Count Rumyantsev—and far from Speransky’s reputation falling, in the following months his reforming activity was strengthened. In February 1810 Speransky was behind an imperial manifesto that instituted a reform aiming to clean up the state of public finances. At this time, the treasury was in a bad state. Even before the wars of 1805–1807, the budget was not balanced; in 1804 state revenues did not exceed 95.5 million rubles while expenses were around 109 million. War significantly aggravated the situation: in 1807 fiscal revenue was 121 million rubles and expenses 170 million. Two years later the situation had become alarming: revenue reached only 127 million and expenses rose to 278 million!35 Faced with this crisis due to the rise in military expenditure and the drop in revenue linked to the decline in foreign trade, Speransky opted for drastic measures: he put an end to the issue of paper assignats, while keeping them on the state’s debt books; he proceeded to sell some imperial real estate to improve the treasury’s liquidity; he raised taxes as a whole and temporarily introduced a tax on the income of nobles, based on a self-evaluation of this income. These measures aimed to increase resources to allow the state to balance its budget.36 And, in fact, by 1812 revenue was close to 300 million rubles.37 But the measures also aroused growing discontent among the nobles and increased the number of Speransky’s enemies. Some months later, the manifesto of August 1810 (and that of July 1811) reorganized the ministries, reaffirming the authority of the minister over his department and defining the nature of relations between ministries and other higher administrative bodies—i.e., the senate, Council of Ministers, and Council of State.
Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon Page 29
