The invisible finger of fate

If all the bills drafted by this statesman had been enacted, Russia would have had a completely different system of government at the beginning of the 19th century. However, his reformist activity ultimately led to his exile in Siberia, while all his papers were sealed and hidden from unwanted public scrutiny. The Decembrist Nikolai Ivanovich Turgenev was the first to publicize some of his legislative ideas in 1847, but was able to do so only through the foreign press.

History knows many people whose ideas were ahead of their time. Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky (1772 — 1839) was unquestionably one of these. This politician’s star illuminated the horizon of the Russian Empire whose political and juridical culture influenced Ukraine throughout the centuries. As Pushkin famously remarked, “the beautiful start of Alexander’s days” held out a promise that the new reign would be different from the ruthless style of Tsar Paul I whose despotism had undermined the idea of monarchical power. To strengthen his autocracy and bring the complex mechanism of government in order, Alexander I handpicked the right people from his milieu.

Speransky found himself among the nobles of St. Petersburg by sheer accident. A priest’s son from the remote village of Cherkutin, Vladimir Gubernia, he was expected to take over his father’s parish, as was the custom in those days. However, fate must have pointed its invisible finger at Mikhail, leading him down a completely different road. An exceptionally bright student at Vladimir Seminary, he was selected for the newly created Aleksandr Nevsky Seminary in St. Petersburg. As the brightest seminary student, he was appointed to teach mathematics, physics, oratorical art, and later philosophy. Speransky was impressed by the works of Rene Descartes and his determination to arm science with precise methods. He was also fascinated by John Locke’s theory of the “social contract” and “natural rights,” and by Leibniz’s principle of continuity, according to which everything in the universe is interconnected.

Word of the extraordinary seminary student reached Prince Aleksei Kurakin, an aristocrat and dignitary, who hired Speransky as his home secretary. In the speedy performance of his first assignment, the preparation of business letters, Mikhail used language distinguished by its sophisticated clerical style that differed markedly from the grandiloquence cultivated by Catherine II’s bureaucracy, which only complicated daily matters of state. Aside from writing letters, he tutored the prince’s son, and in addition to this stipend he earned the handsome salary of 400 rubles for his secretarial work. In Kurakin’s aristocratic milieu the young man acquired the manners of high society and business etiquette. A library of French books in the aristocrat’s home expanded his worldview. He was now unrecognizable from the shy provincial seminary student he used to be.

After the death of Catherine II, Kurakin’s career soared. He was named General Procurator of the Senate, the empire’s supreme governing body. This also touched off Speransky’s unprecedented career: he was relieved of his ecclesiastical status and transferred to state work. He was appointed titular advisor, and several months later he was named collegiate assessor, a position that came automatically with the title of nobleman. A few months later he was appointed collegiate advisor.

Despite the frequent replacements of general procurators under Paul I, Speransky was in great demand. His immense capacity for hard work and, most importantly, the clarity of his reports as well as his ability to discern the subtlest nuances made him an indispensable assistant to any high-ranking official. One of them, Petr Obolianinov, a crude, uneducated government official, expected to see a fearful underling in Speransky. Meanwhile, the individual who entered his office was a personable young man, with a respectful bearing without undue submissiveness, who did not wear a regular uniform, but sported a gabardine, stockings, fancy shoes, jabots, and cuffs, complete with curls and a powdered face in keeping with the fashion of the day.

Natives of Ukraine continued to occupy important posts at the court of Alexander I. One of them, Dmytro Troshchynsky, was appointed to head the udel principalities [independent principalities in medieval Russia] and the postal service; most importantly, he was also the royal spokesman and chief editor. As he searched for an experienced assistant, his choice fell on Speransky, whom he entrusted with drafting manifestos and decrees that invariably accompanied each new tsar’s ascent to the throne.

Various cliques at the royal court immediately started to compete for influence with the tsar. Speransky also became involved in this struggle. His abilities caught the eye of another Ukrainian, Vasyl Kochubei, who secretly instructed Speransky to draft plans for new state institutions — ministries that would fundamentally change the obsolete collegiate system of managing the various sectors of socioeconomic life. When Kochubei was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, Speransky was also transferred to his ministry and instructed to draft a bill on free grain growers, which became a prototype for the bill to abolish serfdom.

He also drafted a liberal clause on the Jews as well as a series of measures to develop Odesa, in particular a measure to make it a free port (porto franco). Speransky drafted all bills and his writing eclipsed all of his predecessors’. His reports to Alexander I became textbook examples. He founded a ministerial journal that published reports to the supreme authorities, legislative acts, and scholarly articles by domestic and foreign authors on issues of government in other European countries.

At first the tsar did not notice the person behind these innovative ideas. But when Kochubei fell ill, Speransky was authorized to report immediately to the tsar, who recognized and appreciated the author’s wit, attention to detail, and, most importantly, his ability to immediately discern exactly what the tsar wanted. After some time Speransky became indispensable to Alexander I, accompanying the Russian ruler on his journeys across the country and inspections of military units. When it came time to choose the form of government for the Finnish Principality, Speransky’s opinion was decisive: it should have the status of a state and not a gubernia.

It is said that during the famous 1808 meeting in Erfurt, Napoleon called Speransky the only bright mind in Russia and even offered to exchange him for a German principality. When asked to share his impressions of the foreign lands, Speransky, who was deeply impressed by all the new things that he was seeing, said that whereas abroad institutions functioned, in Russia it was people.

Speransky’s constant presence in the tsar’s entourage changed the nature of his service: from a clerical worker he was transformed into a statesman, gradually ascending to occupy the most significant place among the tsar’s aristocratic confidants, such as Pavel Stroganov, Nikolai Novosiltsev, A. Chartoryisky, and Aleksei Arakcheev. In discussing state matters, the tsar, who did not have a legal education, listened to the opinion of his secretary of state with whom he shared common political ideals and European models of state governance. This also explains why the secretary of state enjoyed a sound financial status: Speransky received a 12-year lease on a grange in Lifland Gubernia with an annual income of 12,000 rubles.

On secret instructions from the tsar, Speransky started to draft a plan of a general political reform with a clear division of spheres and functions among the supreme bodies of power. He presented his view of the problem in such works as Razmyshleniia o gosudarstvennom ustroistve imperii [Reflections on the State Structure of the Empire], Zapiska ob ustroistve sudebnykh i pravitelstvennykh uchrezhdenii [Essay on the Structure of Judicial and Government Institutions], O dukhe pravitelstva [On the Spirit of Government], and O korennykh zakonakh gosudarstva [On the Fundamental Laws of the State]. For Russia, which until then only knew how to obey royal orders, the concept of limiting the supremacy of the tsar’s law was a revolutionary one.

A century after Montesquieu Speransky arrived at the idea of dividing power into legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and tried to define central and local state institutions for each of them, with a distribution of powers. At the same time, he viewed the monarch as a fundamental unifying element for the three branches. He started with the central state governing bodies (“Only fools start sweeping the stairwell from the bottom stair”), investing the State Duma with legislative powers, reserving executive powers for the Senate and ministries, and judicial powers for the Judicial Senate.

Executive power was improved by bringing order into ministries that were created in 1802. The clear and symmetrical distribution of functions in the central bodies of Napoleon’s France was used as a model. Each ministry received clear-cut powers and staffs with clearly defined functions for their officials. Ministers were personally responsible for the state of affairs in their jurisdiction and had to report to the state assembly whose members would be elected by the people. The latter circumstance was the reason why the tsar rejected this proposal, with the result that this bold plan was implemented only in 1906, as a consequence of the revolution of 1905 — 1907.

Owing to the fact that Russia’s financial affairs were completely neglected as a result of constant wars, Speransky drafted a separate plan for the Ministry of Finance, in which he proceeded from Adam Smith’s theory, proposing to balance costs with revenue by implementing a policy of economizing state funds. The tsar liked his plan, which called for the restoration of the state financial system by putting a stop to the uncontrolled printing of paper money and repaying the domestic debt with proceeds from the sales of state assets to representatives of different classes and foreigners. The practice of granting land in return for service was abolished. A tax was imposed on aristocratic landowners, who had never paid one before. High duties were imposed on alcohol sales in Little Russia and Ostsee Province, which eliminated the two regions’ special status within the empire.

Coordination of all branches of power was the responsibility of the State Council headed by the tsar. The council would also have the right to initiate legislation. From then on, in guaranteeing society’s progress and stability, the tsar’s decisions had to “take the Council’s opinion into account.” It is only natural that of all the proposed structures for supreme governing bodies Alexander I implemented this project first, inaugurating the State Council in 1810.

Speransky the reformist came close to separating judicial and administrative powers. In his view, judicial powers had to be exercised by a judicial senate. It was proposed that some senators would be appointed by the tsar, while the rest would be elected by local nobles. This proposal was taken into account only during the court reform of 1864.

Local bodies at the volost [district], uezd [county], and gubernia [province] levels were also to be divided according to the principle of distribution of legislative, administrative, and judicial powers. They had to function according to the collegial and elective principle, which would decentralize the authoritative powers of the central government. The debates surrounding the State Council’s plan showed that the highest-ranking officials were prepared to accept Montesquieu’s ideas as applied to the Russian reality and enriched with Russian tradition.

Was it possible so radically to overhaul the supreme governing bodies that had been established by previous monarchs? Would the principle of elections not undermine autocracy? Was it worthwhile introducing the notion of “state power,” which is so alien to autocracy? These debates only spurred Speransky to more intense activity, and he was gaining an increasingly profounder understanding of the need for legality as a basis for the supremacy of law, because in Russia executive power had priority over judicial power. Disregard for the courts satisfied the aristocrats, who were accustomed to administering “justice” and punishment in their own estates, ignoring the laws. It became obvious that codification of laws had to become a priority. However, the draft prepared by Speransky in 1812 on the basis of the French Civil Code was rejected by the tsar’s followers, and after some time codification of laws ceased.

Finally, in his plans to create state bodies of power and administration, Speransky tried to break free from the vicious circle of interconnectedness and the interdependence of institutional structures, laws, and bureaucracy. He tried to find a way to limit officials’ arbitrariness, so that they would not violate their official duties while defending state interests. In other words, he asked himself whether it was necessary to improve legislation at a time when administrations and courts were staffed by the same incompetent, ignorant, and arbitrary officials, who were incapable of working within lawful boundaries, and who abused power and succumbed to bribes.

Speransky thus focused on the need to raise the educational and hence cultural level of officials, and cultivated the notion of personal responsibility and personal integrity. After all, noblemen did not send their children to universities because they did not teach military disciplines, and university graduates did not receive official posts that could be obtained much sooner through military service. In response to his secretary of state’s proposal, in 1809 Alexander I issued a law on examinations. Official posts, and noble titles by inference, could be obtained only through a higher education, which could be replaced temporarily by special examinations confirming that the official has mastered Russian grammar and can freely express his thoughts in Russian. It was obligatory to have adequate command of one foreign language to be able to translate foreign texts into Russian.

However, there were many opponents of Speransky’s revision of the political system and the principles of forming a bureaucracy, among them the premier Russian historiographer Nikolai Karamzin. In his essay “Pro staruiu i novuiu Rossiiu” [On the Old and New Russia] Karamzin criticized Speransky’s ideas, pointing out that by assuming partial control of the empire, ministers, senators, and bureaucrats would limit autocratic power.

Speransky went further, looking for answers to such questions as: how can state affairs be made more understandable to the people? How to force officials to serve people and worry about state interests and not their own? Feeling completely independent of the public and depending on the tsar, officials saw the purpose of their work not in serving society, but in pleasing those on top. Speransky thus proposed a solution in the form of a bill that would clearly outline the powers of each official.

The public itself had to become a counterbalance to bureaucracy. After all, officials govern society, which is why the latter must have the right to influence state decisions through the free expression of its will, criticizing measures undertaken by the government. The public must take part in governance on all levels: from the office of his royal highness to volost administrations. Speransky emphasized the notions of collectiveness (collegiality), openness (submission of complaints), and responsibility, as well as state monitoring in the form of audits and resulting dismissals.

Speransky’s ideas were in conflict with Russian reality, and thus most of them proved politically unviable. The ruling Russian elite was too immature to accept them. In Russia, with its underdeveloped public opinion and awareness, these ideas, born of Western models and originally formed in different government systems with the historical conditions that existed in Western countries, were perceived as belonging to a single individual, even though this individual had phenomenal abilities.

Speransky’s resemblance to a European bureaucrat made him an outsider at the tsar’s court. It appeared that simply by removing Speransky the problem of having to implement his ideas would vanish. The tsar did just that and betrayed his associate. He dismissed (deported, to be precise) the 41-year-old Speransky, first to Nizhny Novgorod under strict police supervision and then to Perm. It is difficult to imagine the moral and psychological condition of the secretary of state.

But Speransky did not give in, take offence, or plunge into despair. In his letters to the tsar he argued the correctness of his ideas. As a result, Alexander I appointed Speransky as Civilian Governor of Penza (1816) and General Governor of Siberia from 1819. While occupying this post, Speransky improved administrative practices in this part of the empire, putting his own ideas to the test. In 1821 he was ordered to return to St. Petersburg to continue working on constitutional drafts that Alexander I in fact no longer needed.

Nicholas I reviewed the authorities’ attitude toward Speransky and decided that his abilities should be used to codify laws, since no one else was more eminently suited to this immense task. He was proven right. Polnoe sobranie zakonov [A Full Compendium of Laws] and Svod zakonov [Code of Laws] of the Russian Empire were compiled under Speransky’s supervision.

I disagree with Speransky’s contemporaries and scholars who say that his ideas were ahead of their time. They were in fact relevant and timely for Russia in the first quarter of the 19th century. Unfortunately, most of them are still relevant for present-day Russia, and Ukraine.