the political ideals of michael speransky

The Political Ideals of Michael SperanskyAuthor(s): David ChristianSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Apr., 1976), pp. 192-213Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207253 .

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SEER, Vol. LIV, No. 2, April 1976

The Political Ideals of

Michael Speransky

DAVID CHRISTIAN

IN I809, with the encouragement of the Emperor Alexander I, Michael Speransky drew up a project of reform in which he proposed establishing a new constitution incorporating a representative assembly, the Duma. By virtue both of its scope and its detail, this project has traditionally (and rightly) been regarded as the most impressive programme of political reform ever to emerge from the autocratic government of Imperial Russia. Nevertheless, in spite of the respect traditionally accorded to it, there remains to this day considerable disagreement about the ultimate objectives both of the I809 reform project and of its author. It will be the main aim of this essay to attempt, through an examination of Speransky's earlier writings, both an explanation and a resolution of these dis- agreements.

I

After his disastrous fall from grace in I8I2, Speransky's private papers were placed under seal and all information about his i809 reform plan was suppressed by the government. As a result, attempts to establish the nature of Speransky's political ideals were hampered throughout the century by the absence of the most basic documentary materials. Nevertheless, in spite of attempts to ignore the I 809 reform plan, its existence and its significance could not be denied entirely and there arose two main views of Speransky's reforming activity, one acceptable to the government, the other more or less unofficial but increasingly widely held as the century wore on.

Speransky himself laid the foundation for the first of these interpretations by tacitly condoning the suppression of his most important reform projects. In his writings after I8I2, he drew a veil over the I 809 reform plan, concentrating instead on his purely administrative projects, and in this way he gave the impression that he had never intended to impose any limits on the powers of the autocracy but merely wished to improve its bureaucratic machinery. The locus classicus of this approach occurs in a famous letter he wrote to the Emperor from Perm in I8I3. Here, he wrote:

David Christian is a Lecturer in Russian History at Macquarie University.



POLITICAL IDEALS OF MICHAEL SPERANSKY I93

Essentially, [the I809 reform plan] contained nothing new. It merely gave systematic exposition to the ideas which had occupied Your Majesty's attention since i8oi. The whole aim of the plan was to establish the power of the government, by means of laws, on a firm basis, and in so doing to confer on the operation of this power more dignity and real strength.'

This was sufficiently vague to satisfy Speransky's own sense of honesty, while at the same time managing to suggest that the plan was far less radical than it was in reality.

This interpretation was canonized in Baron Korf's immensely influential biography of Speransky, completed in i86i. Korf had probably read the I809 plan, for a copy was included in the papers of Speransky's daughter, on which his own researches were largely based. Yet even in i 86i, he could not refer to its contents too openly. Instead, he contented himself with obscure references to its wider implications, and concentrated on those aspects of the plan which were already well-known, such as the proposals to reform the State Council and the Senate.

If there is no doubt that the details of these proposals will one day occupy an important page in the history of Russia and in the biography of the Emperor Alexander I, this is not the place to discuss enterprises which did not reach full maturity and were later abandoned by Sper- ansky himself.2

Korf was honest enough to admit that he could not tell the whole truth. Nevertheless, the effect of his biography was to confirm the impression that the plan consisted, essentially, of purely administrative proposals.3

Korf's account provided the staple interpretation of Speransky until the early twentieth century. However, as Korf himself had hinted, his was an official interpretation and it necessarily had its

1 The letter is in Russkzy arkhiv, XXII, Moscow, 1892, pp. 5 I-65, together with another letter to Alexander written soon afterwards and offering a similar apology for Speransky's work. See also an essay Speransky wrote in I826, entitled 'On Government Institutions'. This is published in Plan gosudarstvennago preobrazovaniya grafa M. M. Speranskogo, ed. V. I. Semevsky, Moscow, I905, pp. 230-97.

2 Baron M. A. Korf, Zhizn' grafa Speranskogo, St Petersburg, I86 i, I, p. I I 2. 3 In spite of what may seem his extreme caution, there were some who felt that even

Baron Korf had gone too far. The historian Pogodin cites a curious letter, written in February I862, by Ya. I. de Sanglen, the police official who had been responsible for sealing Speransky's papers some 50 years earlier in I8I2. It gives some insight into the mentality which led to the suppression of Speransky's reform plans for an entire century. De Sanglen claimed that it was still far too early to discuss Speransky openly: 'We are not in England where Herzen is allowed to say anything that comes into his head. It is necessary to wait, to keep it all in one's briefcase until the time is right. Arakcheyev's estimate that the history of Alexander I should only be written in a hundred years' time was reasonable. Passions will cool, malice and envy will hide in their shells, and the truth will triumph.' Korf's biography, he feared, threatened to 'lead society into confusion'. Russkiy arkhiv, IX, I871, pp. 1103, 1104.



I94 DAVID CHRISTIAN

limitations. As a result, it did not go unchallenged even in the nineteenth century. In spite of the censorship, the elements of a more radical interpretation of Speransky had existed as early as i 8I2. First, there was the widespread belief, expressed at the time of his fall, that Speransky was a man of dangerously radical views. There was of course no proof for this view, but it was held not only by those who saw in Speransky a spy and a revolutionary but even by more sober observers. The Danish ambassador, Blomet, reported:

People are beginning to suggest that [Speransky's and Magnitsky's] guilt was connected with internal matters rather than criminal foreign contacts ... The tendency which dominated everything on which Speransky worked was based on the principles of the new philosophy. Amongst other things, he wished to limit and define the unlimited power of the government. But the ground was insufficiently prepared to cultivate on it republican fruits.4

Belief in Speransky's radicalism survived even his return to influence in the second half of Alexander's reign; indeed some members of the Decembrist conspiracy apparently expected him to participate in the government they hoped to establish after the fall of the monarchy.5

The first concrete evidence for a more radical interpretation of Speransky was provided by N. I. Turgenev, whose book, La Russie et les Russes, published in Paris in I847, contained extracts both from the i809 reform plan and from an important early essay, 'On the Fundamental Laws'.6 On the basis of these extracts, Turgenev wrote:

[The Plan] discusses various institutions which are to bring Russia to a political structure based on law [pravovomu stroyu], to a constitutional and representative form of government ... Remembering that this work was written before 1812, one is bound to admit that Speransky was one of the most progressive men of his time, not only in Russia, but in all of continental Europe as well.

Thus, by the middle of the nineteenth century, there existed already two distinct views of Speransky, the one maintaining a dignified silence on his constitutional views and thereby implying that he was a defender of autocratic government, the other claiming that he advocated the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.

Nevertheless, until the full publication of Speransky's papers, both

4 N. K. Shil'der, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyy: yego zhizn' i tsarstvovaniye, St Petersburg, 1897, III, p. 50. Shil'der does not give his source.

5 As a result, Speransky had to adopt an extremely severe attitude to the conspiracy in order to clear his own name from the suspicion of complicity.

6 N. I. Turgenev, La Russie et les Russes, Paris, 1847. He had copied the extracts in I820 when, as an official of the government, he had been given access to Speransky's papers.




were founded to a large extent on guesswork and wishful thinking. During the second half of the century, the censorship gradually released its grip on Speransky. In I871, the extracts published by Turgenev abroad were for the first time circulated legally inside Russia in A. N. Pypin's Obshchestvennoye dvizheniye v Rossii pri Alek- sandre I. In I877, the St Petersburg Public Library received a copy of the I809 reform plan, but attempts to publish it were stopped by the government. A somewhat inaccurate edition of the plan was finally published in volume two of Shil'der's history of the reign of Alexander I, and a more accurate edition, prepared by Semevsky, was issued two years later, in I899. The i802 essay on the fundamental laws was first published by Semevsky in I907.7

With the publication of all Speransky's major reform projects, it became possible for the first time to attempt a reasonably scholarly assessment of Speransky's political ideas. The events of I905 en- couraged such an attempt, for not only was the censorship more relaxed than at any time in the nineteenth century, but the issues tackled by Speransky suddenly acquired new relevance with the granting of a constitution and the establishment of a representative legislative body, the State Duma. As a result, in the years after I905, several historians turned their attention to Speransky. Their efforts, however, did not produce any radically new interpretations. On the contrary, the two schools of thought which had arisen in the nineteenth century both found new adherents, who used the newly published materials to bolster their respective views of Speransky, and as a result these two interpretations have survived with little alteration to the present day.

Soviet historians, it is true, have added a new dimension to these interpretations by concentrating on the class content of Speransky's reform plans, an approach epitomized by Pokrovsky's remark that Speransky's career 'makes sense only once one has succeeded in identifying the social groups whose interests it served.'8 Thus, the crucial object of most Soviet accounts of Speransky has been to determine whether he was a defender of the existing 'feudal' order or advocated the establishment of a bourgeois economic and political order. Both views have had their defenders. Pokrovsky in his later writings, treated Speransky as a member of the bourgeoisie; however, later Soviet historians have rejected this view, treating him instead

7 See 'Vvedeniye k ulozheniyu gosudarstvennykh zakonov', ed. V. I. Semevsky, in Istoricheskoye obozreniye, X, St Petersburg, I899, pp. I-62, and V. I. Semevsky, 'Pervyy politicheskiy traktat Speranskogo' (Russkoye bogatstvo, no. I, St Petersburg, 1907, pp. 46- 84). For a brief account of the bibliographical history of Speransky's writings, see S. N. Valk, ed., M. M. Speransky: Proyekty i zapiski, Leningrad, I96I (hereafter called Proyekty).

8 M. N. Pokrovsky, 'Russkaya istoriya s drevneyshikh vremyon', in Izbrannyye proiz- vedenmya, II, Moscow, I965, p. 201.



I96 DAVID CHRISTIAN

as an unusually intelligent defender of the existing order, as one of the few who saw that the feudal order could be held together only by making timely concessions to the social and economic forces under- mining it. Soviet accounts of Speransky are often extremely interesting in their own right, and the questions they pose are important; however, they will not be dealt with here as they tend to neglect the 'constitutional' issues with which this essay is primarily concerned.9

In what follows it will be argued, first, that the materials published at the turn of the century entirely refute the 'official' interpretation of Speransky, and secondly that the 'liberal' view, while correct in essentials, also requires important modifications of emphasis in the light of these materials.

II The more conservative view received its earliest modern formula- tion in an essay by Pokrovsky, published in the Granat history of nineteenth-century Russia.'0 Here, Pokrovsky argued that the institutional limitations on the autocracy contained in the I809 reform plan were not really intended to work at all. The plan's liberalism was sham. S. M. Seredonin developed this view more fully in an extremely influential biography of Speransky published in the Rus- sian Biographical Dictionary in I909. Seredonin argued that, far from being the radical he was often portrayed as, Speransky in fact acted as a restraining influence on his more impetuous monarch. He '. . . convinced the Tsar to return to the view that the autocratic power must, for the time being, be preserved."' More recently, in the West, this view has received the influential support of Marc Raeff in a biography of Speransky published in I 957, and Raeff's view has now acquired wide currency amongst Western historians.'2 In what follows, I shall concentrate on the two fullest modern expositions of this interpretation of Speransky, those of Seredonin and Raeff.

9 See Pokrovsky, 'Russkaya istoriya.. . '; A. V. Predtechensky, Ocherki obshchestvenno- politicheskoy istorii Rossii v pervoy chetverti XIX veka, Moscow-Leningrad, 1 957; S. B. Okun', Ocherki istorii SSSR, konets XVIII-pervaya chetvert' XIX veka, Leningrad, 1956. For the clearest summary of the transition from Pokrovsky's interpretation of the reign of Alex- ander I to those of modern Soviet historians, see N. Druzhinin, 'Razlozheniye feodal'- no-krepostnicheskoy sistemy v izobrazhenii M. N. Pokrovskogo', in Protiv istoricheskoy kontseptsii M. N. Pokrovskogo, Moscow-Leningrad, 1939, part, I, pp. 337-86. Two other interesting Soviet accounts of Speransky are less clearly Marxist in their approach. They are contained in A. E. Presnyakov, Aleksandr I, St Petersburg, 1924, and B. Syromyatni- kov, 'M. M. Speransky kak gosudarstvennyy deyatel' i politicheskiy myslitel" (Sovetskoye gosudarstvo i pravo, Moscow, 1940, no. 3, pp. 92-I 13).

10 'Aleksandr I', in Istoriya Rossii v XIX veke, A. I. Granat, St Petersburg n.d. (1907) 1, pP. 31-66.

11 S. M. Seredonin, 'Graf M. M. Speransky', in Russkiy biograficheskiy slovar', St Peters- burg-Moscow, 1909, p. 202. Emphasis in the original.

12 M. Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, The Hague, 1957.




Seredonin's article challenged existing views on several counts. First, he showed little of the by now traditional reverence for Sper- ansky's capacities as a political thinker. On the contrary, he suggested that Speransky's knowledge of political theory was highly super- ficial,13 and that the I809 reform plan was merely a hotch-potch of bits and pieces from various constitutions and political writings:

The 'Plan' is sewn together from rags taken from political literature or from the French constitutions of 1791, I793, I799, I804. Most of its borrowings are from the Constitution of 1799; much is taken from the oracle of the period, Montesquieu, and not a little from the Declaration of Rights, from Blackstone, Rousseau and others.14

As to the plan's contents, he argued that Speransky had intended merely to introduce the rule of law, zakonnost', into Russian life, while maintaining the autocracy itself intact. He conceded that the I809 reform plan represented an attempt to create a constitutional system of government but argued that these aspects of the plan were in fact merely a sop to the Emperor. According to Seredonin, Speransky's own, more sober aims were reflected rather in those plans which were made public in i 8i o and i 8i i, in the establishment of the State Council and the Ministries and in particular in the attempt to create an independent judicial system through a reform of the Senate.

Speransky had some reason to suppose that a correctly established and independent judicial system would be able to protect the law and at first this appeared to him sufficient. The starting point of his plan was the conviction .., that he had found these ideas, that is the ideas of justice and law, in the soul of the monarch. He could and was bound to believe that the monarch would always protect both the independence of the courts and the strength of their decision. The principle of the rule of law, so dear to him, would triumph without any political reform, whose difficulty he fully comprehended.15

Thus, the centrepiece of Speransky's reform plan was in fact the attempted reform of the Senate.

Unabashed by the absence of any direct evidence to support this conclusion, Seredonin claimed that the necessary documentation would doubtless be forthcoming in the future: '. . . it is', he claimed, 'permissible to make the deduction that the plans known to us through Turgenev, Shil'der and Semevsky, do not represent the final version of Speransky's plan.'"6 There was, he argued, probably

13 He added that most of it was picked up from his assistant, Balugyansky, in i8o8. If he had read Speransky's essay of 1802 on the fundamental laws, long extracts of which had been published in 1907 by Semevsky, he might not have made this rash statement.

14 Seredonin, op. cit., p. 197. 'r ibid., p. 215- 16 ibid., p. 203.



I98 DAVID CHRISTIAN

another, shortened version of the plan in which Speransky 'convinced the monarch to return to the view that the autocratic power must, in the meantime, be preserved.' Unfortunately, no 'revised' version of the plan has yet come to light and one must therefore conclude that the I809 plan meant what it appeared to say.

Some fifty years later, the American historian, Marc Raeff, attempted to argue a similar case without, however, resorting to this kind of methodological sleight of hand. Instead, he based his argument on a careful re-reading of Speransky's early writings together with an attempt to establish more precisely the meaning contem- poraries attributed to the word 'Constitution'.

Raeff distinguished between two opposing conceptions of 'Con- stitutionalism'. On the one hand, he argued, the term could refer to a political tradition originating in English Parliamentarianism and receiving its most extreme expression in the French and Ameri- can Constitutions. In this sense it meant

... a written document clearly stating the sources and character of political sovereignty, guaranteeing the basic rights of all citizens, establishing the mechanism of a representative parliamentary government, and, most important, confining the executive to a position sub- ordinate to that of the elected legislative power.

For Alexander I, however, and for the members of his 'Unofficial Committee', the term meant something very different:

What they called constitution should perhaps be termed 'fundamental principles of administrative organisation'. The term constitution con- veyed to them the idea of an orderly system of government and administration, free from the caprices and demoralising tyranny of arbitrari- ness. To give Russia a constitution, therefore, implied bringing clarity and order to the administration and basing the relationship between the government and the individual subject on the rule of law.17

This, argues Raeff, is the view of constitutionalism which Spe- ransky also held, and on this basic issue he and Alexander were in complete accord. 'There can be no truer characterization of Spe- ransky's and Alexander's views than the remark of the great German jurist, E. I. Bekker, "a good administration is better than the best constitution."' 18 Accordingly, Raeff summarizes the intention of Speransky's reform plans as follows:

He aspired at establishing a 'true monarchy' in Russia. Did this not mean that he contemplated a limited constitutional monarchy in the long run? Actually ... he was not much interested in 'constitution' in the contemporary sense. He was primarily interested in putting the 17 Raeff, op. cit., pp. 41, 42. See also p. 214. 18 ibid., p. I66.




relations of private citizens among themselves and in regard to the government on predictable, solid foundations, within the framework of permanent fundamental laws.19

Speransky aimed, in other words, at establishing a rule of law, but in order to achieve this he intended to rely exclusively on the power of the autocracy.

In his naive and shortsighted reliance on the enlightened despotism of an absolute Emperor assisted by efficient reliable servants, Speransky displayed a traditional form of Russian political psychology which saw in an autocratic Tsar the best defense against the tyranny of nobles and the abuse of private individuals ... Distrusting the nobility and well aware of the weakness and inadequacy of the 'bourgeoisie', he argued for the maintenance of autocracy as best defence against chaotic tyranny.20

Unfortunately, this interpretation is, finally, as unacceptable as that of Seredonin, for it rests on a number of dubious readings of crucial passages in Speransky's writings. One or two central ex- amples should illustrate this point sufficiently.

In summarizing the x809 reform plan, Raeff paraphrases Spe- ransky as follows: 'The principal task [of the plan] is to found the absolute government, heretofore arbitrary and tyrannical in its manifestations, on stable and clearly defined laws.' This statement, with its clear implication that the government after the reforms will remain absolute, is apparently convincing proof of Raeff's case. However, the original passage in fact carries just the opposite implication. 'The general object of the reforms', wrote Speransky, 'con- sists in establishing and founding the government, hitherto absolute, on unchangeable laws.'21 The implication here is clearly that the government will no longer be absolute once the reforms are completed. Further, what is here implied is stated openly elsewhere in the plan, when Speransky draws a distinction between false and true reform. The first, he argued, involves covering the autocratic government with the external forms of law while in fact leaving all its powers intact. The second involves not only covering the autocracy with external forms but also 'limiting it by the internal and essential force of institutions and also by deeds.' Naturally, he concludes that only the second type of reform can truly establish lawful government. 'The first, under the excuse of a unified sovereign power, introduces complete tyranny while the second seeks in fact to limit

19 ibid., p. I64. 20 ibid., p. 221. 21 Proyekty, p. I64. My emphasis. In Russian this passage reads: 'Obshchiy predmet

obrazovaniya sostoit v tom, chtob pravleniye dosele samoderzhavnoye postanovit' i uchredit' na nepremenyayemom zakone.'



200 DAVID CHRISTIAN

and restrict it.'22 For Speransky, therefore, lawful government was

inseparable from a limited sovereign power. Another example. Elsewhere Raeff writes that Speransky 'argued

for the maintenance of autocracy as the best defence against chaotic tyranny',23 a conclusion he illustrates with a quotation from Sper- ansky's 'Memoir on reform of the judicial and administrative organs of Russia', written in 1803:

The sovereign power in Russia is the autocratic Monarch who combines in his person the legislative, judicial and executive powers and who dis- poses without limits of all the forces of the State. This principle has no material limitations.

Apparently clear enough, this quotation is in fact highly misleading, for it comes from a passage entitled 'Of the existing structure of the government in Russia', and describes not Speransky's ideal of government, but a state of affairs which in his view needed reforming. Speransky's ideal, as this paper will argue, was in fact very different.

One last example. In discussing the i809 reform plan, Raeff argued that its "'constitutional" character depended entirely on the composition and role given to the legislative institution', and that this body, the State Duma, had in fact in Speransky's plan 'no legislative initiative or power at all ... The State Duma is to be merely a consultative or deliberative body with advisory opinion only.' This view is unacceptable on two counts. First, Speransky's Duma did possess a limited right of initiative, when 'a government measure clearly violates the basic laws of the state', and 'when the government fails at the set time to submit the accounts required by law.' In these two cases the Duma could, on its own initiative, start proceedings against the offending official. More important than this, however, Speransky did give to the Duma considerable power in legislation, for after establishing a basic distinction between legislative and executive enactments, he laid down that no legislative act could take effect unless composed in the Duma. The Duma, in other words, became an integral part of the legislative authority; and as the term 'legislation' was defined so as to cover all basic political laws (including constitutional laws and laws on taxation) this stipulation gave to the Duma powers at least as extensive as those claimed by the English parliament in the seventeenth century. As will become clear later, this comparison is by no means arbitrary. Clearly, this proposal involved a very serious encroachment on the hitherto unlimited powers of the autocracy.

Thus, Raeff's case can be supported neither by Speransky's own 22 Proyekty, p. i68. 23 Raeff, op. Cit., p. 22I.



POLITICAL IDEALS OF MICHAEL SPERANSKY 20I

direct statements nor by a consideration of his concrete proposals for reform.

This interpretation of Speransky is also suspect for the more general reason that it fails to make sense of many other passages which are central to Speransky's thought. This is particularly true of the important early paper, 'On the Fundamental Laws of the State'. Seredonin had simply ignored this essay, although extracts from it had been printed as early as I847 by N. I. Turgenev and Semevsky had published a more complete edition in 1907, two years before Seredonin's article was published. Raeff refers to the essay, but his summary makes it appear confused, vague and often con- tradictory; indeed he finally dismisses it as 'the work of a young and politically immature person'.24

This was perhaps inevitable, partly because Semevsky's edition, which Raeff used, was itself not complete, but more important was the fact that Raeff approached the paper with the firm conviction that Speransky did not seriously wish to limit the autocracy. This made confusion unavoidable for, in fact, the essay is an extremely closely argued and often profound discussion of the nature and in particular the social foundations of 'true' or constitutional monarchy, and as such it provided the theoretical groundwork for all of Spe- ransky's subsequent attempts at political reform.

III The more liberal interpretation of Speransky, hinted at obscurely throughout the nineteenth century, was finally established on a firm footing in the first decade of this century, notably by Semevsky.25 Nevertheless, this view also contained relics of the earlier, official interpretation. Above all, while arguing that Speransky advocated a constitutional government, many historians continued to detect in his writings an exaggerated respect for institutions and institutional reform. In this they were following a long established tradition.

As early as i 8ii, Karamzin had accused Speransky of a mere 'playing with forms', but it was N. I. Turgenev who really established this view of Speransky. Of the I809 reform plan, he wrote that it 'discusses various institutions which are to bring Russia to a political structure based on law, to a constitutional and representative form

24ibid., p. i28. 25 See V. I. Semevsky, 'Vopros o preobrazovanii gosudarstvennogo stroya v Rossii v

XVIII v. i pervoy chetverti XIX veka', in Byloye, St Petersburg, I906, nos. I, 2, 3; V. E. Yakushkin, Gosudarstvennaya vlast' i proyekty gosudarstvennoy reformy v Rossii, St Petersburg, I906; M. V. Dovnar-Zapol'sky, Obzor noveyshey russkoy istorii, I, Kiev, I9I2, ch. V, pp. 62-97. See also Pokrovsky, 'Russkaya istoriya'; Syromyatnikov, op. cit., loc. cit., and Georg Sacke, 'M. M. Speranskij. Politische Ideologie und reformatorische Tatigkeit' (Jahrbacher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, IV, Munich, I939, pp. 331-50) for some more recent accounts along the same lines.



202 DAVID CHRISTIAN

of government.' Here, in Turgenev's view, lay the plan's great flaw. It focused on institutional reforms while ignoring the more basic issue of social reform, in particular the need to abolish serfdom. And because of this Turgenev accused Speransky of superficiality, a partiality for abstraction and a concern for the form rather than the substance of reform, charges that were to stick for a long time. Of the I809 reform plan, he wrote:

... in this work, as in all of his other works as well, Speransky is too attached to the forms and does not enter sufficiently into the essence of the matter ... he appears to have believed in the all-powerfulness of orders and paper circulars, in the omnipotence of forms. He managed to give to his creations a certain degree of system, but he was powerless to give them a soul, for the simple reason that he himself had no soul.

Baron Korf, who had known Speransky personally and was much more favourably disposed towards him than Turgenev, also con- sidered that Speransky had failed to consider the social under- pinnings of reform:

... living as he was, a life that was more theoretical, more cloistered than practical, Speransky did not see, or hid from himself, the fact that at least part of his plans were far in advance of the age of his people and the level of its education and independence. He did not see that he was building without foundations, that is with minds which were insufficiently prepared morally, judicially and politically . . .26

The view that Speransky had relied too much on institutional reform was by now firmly established and with it the view that he was ultimately responsible for the excessive bureaucratization of Russian life. Pogodin wrote in I871:

He created, it seems, a huge artificial building, with well-proportioned parts, with firm foundations in the mind, but none in the nature of things, at least not in the nature of Russian things of his time. Speransky ascribed ... much to form, to regulations, and did not know how abhorrent this was to the Russian nature.27

Leo Tolstoy provided a literary counterpart to this view of Spe- ransky in the famous portrait of him in book II of War and Peace. Here, Speransky appeared as the very embodiment of soulless abstraction, and it is perhaps not fanciful to suppose that this highly unflattering portrait was as influential in moulding popular opinions of Speransky as any more scholarly accounts of him.

The tendency to exaggerate Speransky's faith in schemes of administrative reform was so firmly established in the nineteenth century

26 Korf, op. cit., I, p. i io. 27 Russkiy arkhiv, IX, I871, pp. 1228, 1230.



POLITICAL IDEALS OF MICHAEL SPERANSKY 203

that even after the publication of all his main papers on reform at the end of the century, historians continued to stress the institutional details of his reform plans at the expense of the far more interesting sociological arguments on which they are based.

In fact, however, careful examination of Speransky's early papers shows that he had little faith in the power of either laws or institutions to effect fundamental reform. His constitutionalism was based not on an exaggerated faith in institutions, but on a highly sophisti- cated conception of the relationship between politics and what would now be called sociology. These aspects of Speransky's thought, which owed much to his study of Montesquieu, have so far been ignored in the literature on Speransky, but they are, nevertheless, crucial to a full understanding of his subsequent reforming activity.

IV Speransky wrote his first essays on reform in I802, at the very beginning of his career, during the discussions which led to the reform of the Senate and the establishment of a ministerial system in Septem- ber i 802. These discussions produced only meagre results, but they had nevertheless touched upon some matters of fundamental importance. Their starting point was a concern that there be no repeti- tion of the arbitrary tyranny of Paul I, a concern which expressed itself in the hope of establishing in Russia a rule of law. This hope also provided the starting point for Speransky's first major essay on political reform, 'On the Fundamental Laws of the State'.

'In what way', Speransky asked, 'can the fundamental laws of a state be made so immovable and unchangeable that no power can violate them, and so that the force of an all-powerful monarchy is powerless against them alone?' The whole essay, indeed one could argue the whole of Speransky's activity as a political reformer, was an attempt to resolve this one question, to establish a constitution or code of fundamental political laws, so firmly based that no future Paul I could overthrow it. This task, in turn, contained two sub- ordinate tasks. It was necessary both to publish a constitution and to ensure its durability. He wasted little time on the first problem, indeed his somewhat perfunctory discussion of the theoretical bases of constitutional government indicates that Speransky felt that these could be taken for granted.

All governments, he argued, are established by the will of the people in order to protect the person, property and honour of each individual, and they are legitimate to the extent that they fulfil these conditions. However, these conditions can be expressed with varying degrees of precision and explicitness. Every government, he



204 DAVID CHRISTIAN

argued, evolves through two historical stages, whether it is monarchical or aristocratic. In the first stage government is despotic. It is established on general conditions but given much discretion as to the way in which it exercises its powers and fulfils its appointed tasks. This discretion, however, naturally affords ample opportunity for the government to abuse its powers. Therefore, in the second stage, that of 'limited monarchy or moderate aristocracy', the conditions of its rule are determined in greater detail, and laid down in a 'general government statute or constitution.'

When monarchs ceased being fathers to their people, when the people realized that the monarchs distinguished between their own interests and the welfare of the people and used the power entrusted to them not only for the people, but sometimes even against the people, then, to the general conditions by which the general will had founded the government (and whose indeterminateness had exposed them to tyranny) they found it necessary to add particular rules and to determine more exactly what the people wished. These rules are called the fundamental laws of the state and taken together they form the general government statute or constitution.

In a footnote, he adds that it follows from these remarks: 'i. that the fundamental laws of the state must be a creation of the people, and 2. that the fundamental laws of a state place limits on the autocratic will.'28 A constitution, in short, was a contract, a detailed statement of the conditions on which a government was established by the people.

His originality lay not here, in his discussion of the legal bases of constitutional monarchy, but in his handling of the second problem, that of ensuring that the government was incapable of breaking the constitution once it was established. He realized from the outset that the constitution itself, being a mere legal document, could not guarantee its own survival. It was a part of what he called the 'external government' of a country, its laws and political institutions. These he distinguished from the 'internal government', the real balance of forces within a given society.

By the 'external form of government' I mean all those public and open regulations, charters, institutions, and decrees by which the forces of a state are maintained in apparent equilibrium. By the 'internal form of government' I mean that disposition of the forces of a state by which no single one may acquire a preponderance in the system as a whole, nor destroy all of its relationships.29

28 Proyekty, p. 3I. Emphasis in original. 29 ibid. Had he lived a century later, he might have talked instead of a 'superstructure'

and a 'substructure'.




It was to this 'internal form of government' that Speransky looked for a means of protecting the inviolability of the constitution. The internal structure of any government was, he argued, comprised of two elements, the will of the people which set it up and the power granted it by the people at its establishment. In other words, the people not only consented to its establishment, but also placed at its disposal a certain amount of their manpower. If the government is to be limited at all, it must therefore be limited not merely by the will (public opinion) but also by the power of society. Or, more bluntly, 'Force can only be limited by force, and one cannot suppose without confusing all natural understanding, that any institutions of the will can act as barriers to force.'30 Thus, he concludes, 'the force of the government can not be limited except by the force of the people.'

That Speransky is not talking of 'force' in any merely theoretical sense is shown when he turns to the example of seventeenth-century England. What, he asks, in the last resort compels the English government to respect the laws? It is clearly not the law itself or Parliament, the legislative body, for the monarch himself always remains beyond the reach of the laws. In the last resort, he concludes, it is the threat of revolt, the knowledge that society will protect its rights if necessary by revolution, which prevents the monarch from infringing these rights. 'Blackstone, having listed all the prerogatives of the people and having posed himself the question: with what could the people respond if the monarch should attempt to overthrow them or to violate their limits, replied-with revolution.' In other words, the English government abided by the laws because it knew from the bitter experience of two revolutions what the alternative was.31

Thus, the original task of preventing the government from infringing the constitution, a problem which appeared at first sight to be primarily legal, turned out in Speransky's hands to be a matter of political and ultimately of military power. The government can, argued Speransky, be kept within the limits imposed by the law only as long as its subjects are not only willing but also capable of de- fending those limits, if necessary by force. This idea lies at the very heart of Speransky's notion of constitutional government.

The remainder of the essay is, in consequence, a discussion of power and its sociological foundations. It examines the sociological bases of despotism and 'true monarchy', the reasons why in a despot-

30 Montesquieu had also expressed this idea, indeed it provided the origin of his cele- brated notion of a division of powers. 'Pour qu'on ne puisse abuser du pouvoir, il faut que par la disposition des choses, le pouvoir arrete le pouvoir.' De I'Esprit des lois, Bk. XI, ch. 4.

31 Somewhat sinisterly, Speransky adds, 'But it seems to me that this resort is available even without a constitution.' Proyekty, p. 33.



2o6 DAVID CHRISTIAN

ism such as Russia, society is too weak to resist the government, and how this state of affairs can be rectified.

In theory, he argued, the people should always possess 'in themselves sufficient strength to counterbalance the strength of the government', for they are, ultimately, the source of all its power. Speransky means this quite literally: they staff its army, police and bureaucracy, and collect its taxes. There are, however, several obstacles to the effective exercise of the people's power. First, the power of the government is concentrated while that of the people is dispersed. Secondly, the government must have an exclusive right to the exercise of certain types of power. No individual, for instance, can be allowed to issue money or form a private army. These factors are, as it were, in the nature of government and cannot be changed. There are, however, two other factors about which something can be done. First, if the power of the government is not to be completely destroyed, that of the people must act only at the limits of govern- mental authority. Therefore, to act effectively, the people must know these limits and be prepared to guard them. Society needs, in other words, an educated public opinion, aware of and jealous of its rights. Secondly, the people must be united in their ideas and interests, otherwise, 'with the slightest division of interests between classes, their powers will be exhausted in mutual conflict, leaving insufficient strength to counterbalance the power of the government.'

'Here', he writes, 'are the circumstances which in all states render the power of the people insignificant and consolidate tyranny.' The essential task, therefore, is to find a way of removing these two obstacles to the effective exercise of the people's power. The people must first be made more unified, and secondly, they must be provided with energetic and enlightened leadership:

... as it is impossible to imagine that the whole people should be prepared to defend the limits between the government and themselves, it is necessary that there be a special class of men which, standing between the throne and the people, may be sufficiently enlightened to know the exact limits of power, sufficiently independent so as not to fear, and so united by its interests with the people that it will never find it advantageous to betray the people. This would be a living sentinel which the people puts, instead of itself, at the boundaries of the government's power.

Speransky apparently had in mind here a class something like the English gentry, which was far less sharply divided from the mass of the people than its Russian equivalent, and notoriously concerned to protect its rights against the government.

Speransky then lists the essential features of the two estates of




people and nobility. The nobility should be hereditary and moder- ately wealthy, appointments to government posts should be independent of the supreme power and, perhaps most important, the nobility must be united to the people by the institution of primogeniture which ensures that the younger sons of the nobility become absorbed in the mass of the people.32 The lower class, the people, should have the right to possess property and to participate in the composition of the laws, at the very least in that of the fundamental laws. This clearly implied the abolition of serfdom. In addition, all property was to be hereditary and official duties elective. The task of preserving the laws, however, would be the exclusive prerogative of the nobility. These features, Speransky suggests, have been held in common by all limited monarchies at all times.

Under such conditions, Speransky concluded, society can usually prevent tyranny, but in the last resort it can and will revolt, for while in poorly formed states revolt would lead only to anarchy, in a proper monarchical society, revolutions are 'like a cleansing wind.... All the transformations in England', he adds, 'finished with freedom more firmly established.'33 The English civil wars of the seventeenth century were clearly in the forefront of Speransky's mind during the composition of this paper.

The details of this last stage of the argument are not in themselves of fundamental importance. What needs stressing is the central conclusion, the idea that a 'true monarchy' must be based on a definite social structure whose main feature was an enlightened, hereditary nobility, linked to the people by the institution of primogeniture.

The second half of the essay attempted to apply these theoretical conclusions to Russia and to deduce from them a programme of reforms. The social structure of Russia was, he argued, highly un- suited to freedom. In Russia there are no free men, only two types of slaves: the slaves of the monarch and those of the landowners, and it is in the interests of each of these classes that the other should remain enslaved. Consequently,

Russia ... exhausts its powers in mutual struggle and leaves to the government unlimited freedom of action. A state composed in this manner whatever external constitution it has, even if its nobility and its towns have been given charters and even if it were to have not only two Senates but as many legislative parliaments as well-this state is despoti- cal. And as long as its elements remain in that relationship to each other, it will never be monarchical.

32 See Montesquieu, De l'Esprit. . ., Bk. V. ch. IX, for a similar description of the nobility in a monarchical government.

33 See ibid., Bk. V, ch. XI, for the belief that civil war is less destructive and calamitous in a monarchy than in a despotism.



208 DAVID CHRISTIAN

Thus Speransky explained the survival of despotic government in Russia primarily by the continued existence of serfdom, an institution which deprived Russian society of both the will and the power to offer a united resistance to its government. The conclusion was clear: any serious attempt to establish a 'true monarchy' in Russia, must begin with changes in public opinion and the country's social structure. Accordingly, the last few pages of the essay suggest a number of practical reforms whose aim was the complete overhaul, not of Russia's political, but of its social structure. This was to be achieved by the introduction of primogeniture and the gradual abolition of serfdom.

These proposals are sketched out in a rather perfunctory manner and Speransky was clearly more interested at this stage in establishing the theoretical foundations for a reform than in working out the details of its implementation. It was the principle that needed stressing, the principle that 'force can only be limited by force'. From this point of view, then, the essay can be regarded as an attack on the kinds of reforms the government was preparing in i802, reforms which involved considerable changes in the form of the government, but were powerless to affect its essentially despotic nature. He wrote:

From this it is apparent how greatly they are mistaken who think that rights given to various classes or prerogatives given to various judicial or even legislative bodies can make the laws secure or establish a form of government-they would be a building founded on sand.

Here he was referring directly to the Senatorial reforms of I802 and the Catherinian Charter to the Nobility. He was equally sceptical of the idea that a beneficent monarch might simply grant a constitution.

From this it is also apparent how vain it is to write or promulgate general government statutes or constitutions without basing them on the real forces of the state . .. the good intentions of a beneficent genius may give them a certain strength but this strength, not flowing from their own nature, will only have a phantom existence which will of necessity disappear with a change in the mind which produced it.

V What was the relationship between the early theoretical essays of 1802-4 and Speransky's later projects of political reform ? It is hard to know with any certainty, for Speransky himself never returned to the subject of these early essays. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for believing not only that he remained true to the ideals contained in them, but also that they constituted the theoretical basis for all his later projects of political and administrative reform and that these later projects cannot be fully understood apart from this basis.




It is, of course, true that in I8IO and I81 I, his achievements fell as far short of his hopes as had the reforms of I802, and that after I812 he apparently ceased entirely to concern himself directly with projects of constitutional reform. Nevertheless, the legal and administrative reforms to which he did devote the rest of his career, his work as governor of Siberia, as a member of the Committee of 6 December I826, and as editor of the first modern collection of Rus- sian laws, all these were perfectly consistent with the ideas he had advanced as early as I802.

Indeed, far from conflicting with Speransky's later reforming activity, the essays of 1802-4 help to put them in perspective, to clarify their position in Speransky's thought as a whole. Above all, they clarify the role Speransky attributed to purely institutional reforms.

Speransky's early papers show that he was in fact well aware of the limits of such reforms and that he fully understood the vital importance of reforming society itself as well as its institutional superstructure. However, at the same time, Speransky clearly had serious practical doubts about the possibility of undertaking the vast programme of social reforms outlined in the essay on fundamental laws. In some notes written in the same year and entitled 'On the Gradual- ness of Social Improvement', he wrote that social changes cannot be introduced by force but must, by and large, be left to natural pro- cesses. 'Improvements undertaken by force are not stable; they violate nature. Nature always prepares its plans in secret and because of this its works are certain.'34 There were, therefore, very definite limits to the amount that could be achieved by deliberate reform, limits imposed by time and the existing level of social development. 'One of the main principles of rulers must be to know their people, to understand the times.'

Thus, although Speransky held that the ultimate goal of political reform must be the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, he did not believe this could be achieved as long as the necessary social foundations did not exist and he also denied that the social foundations could be created purely by the conscious efforts of the government. Further, in 1803 at least, he apparently saw no signs that the natural development of Russian society would make reform possible even in the near future, for, according to Semevsky, he informed an acquaintance that 'he did not believe in the possibility of establishing political liberty in Russia.'35

In this unrewarding situation, Speransky was forced, for the time

34 This paper is in Proyekty, PP. 75, 76. 3a5 Semevsky, op. cit. (Byloye, i906, , P. 3). The acquaintance was Dumont, the trans-

lator of Bentham.



2IO DAVID CHRISTIAN

being at least, to give up hope of realizing his long-term goals, and settle instead for a 'minimum' programme consisting of reforms which were far less ambitious but more politically realistic than those he had proposed in I802. This apparently contradicted much that he had written earlier, but in fact the two programmes were organi- cally related. The theoretical link between the two was provided by the notion of 'public opinion', to which Speransky devoted a short essay written in I 802.36 There were, Speransky had argued, two main elements composing the 'internal constitution' of a government: the power and the will of the people. Speransky now doubted the possibility of undertaking the social engineering required to increase the 'power' of the people, but he had more faith in the possibility of deliberately encouraging the development of the second factor, the popular will as expressed in 'public opinion'. He also argued that a developed public opinion might in certain circumstances be powerful enough to outweigh the social divisions which weakened society's capacity to resist the government. The will to freedom might itself generate the force required to overthrow a despotic government.

In all states moving towards enlightenment, there is established imper- ceptibly in the course of time, a special type of force above the power of the laws and the state, a force whose effect on minds is at first weak, but gradually broadens until it becomes, finally, the main element of political existence and determines the fate of human societies. Beginning in the secrecy of individual self-love, growing proportionately with the union of personal interests and those of society, this force soon appears in human societies with all the marks of power, often invincible, and always respected. Sometimes supporting the laws and the government, sometimes opposing them, it overthrows states or serves as their foundation.

This force, 'public opinion' or the 'spirit of the people' Speransky defined as 'an internal conviction of the large part of the people on any political or civil subject,' no matter whether it was based on custom, fiction or the action of the laws and the state.

The character of the people was, he argued, the major element in public opinion, but as long as that character was expressed only in private matters, it could play no important role in government. This, he noted, was the case in 'eastern despotic states', where the people are not allowed any say in government and have no interest in government affairs. Public opinion can be born out of revolution and chaos, as in the French Revolution, but if created in this manner, it will not endure. However, a public spirit formed by the gradual workings of enlightenment and increasing popular concern with the

36 'O sile obshchego mneniya' in Proyekty, pp. 77-83-



POLITICAL IDEALS OF MICHAEL SPERANSKY 21 I

nature of government, is more durable. And a government could, he believed, deliberately accelerate this development amongst its people, by acquainting society with the institutional forms of liberty even before it was ready for the substance. Thus, Speransky was willing to grant a considerable propaganda value to institutional reforms such as those of i802, even though he had little faith in their intrinsic value.

The only benefit which the laws may extract from these external institutions is that they may acquaint the people with the notion of rights and if, in the course of many years, these rights remain undestroyed and up- held by the personal qualities of the monarchs, they may so establish themselves in the mind of the people that, in the sequel, it may become more difficult and even more dangerous to overthrow them.37

This approach to reform was developed at length in Speransky's first major reform project, a paper apparently written under com- mission in I803, and entitled 'Memoir on the Organization ofJudicial and Administrative Institutions in Russia'. From the outset he made it clear that he was discussing judicial and administrative, but not constitutional reform. The aim of the paper was to propose ways of reforming the existing government apparatus 'so that it may be as close as possible to a monarchical administration, without destroy- ing the present system.' This was a reform of the 'external government' alone with all the limitations this implied. But the ultimate aim and the main justification for these proposals in Speransky's eyes at least, was that they could help prepare the way for the eventual introduction of a 'true monarchy', indeed he was even prepared to sacrifice efficiency to this goal, for he argued that existing institutions such as the Senate should be retained for their symbolic value, however powerless and futile they might be.

However insignificant the Senate may appear in its present form, and however true it may seem that a method of work based purely on ministerial government would be incomparably more successful, yet one may be sure that the complete extinction of this body would erase the very shadow of monarchical freedom in the mind of the people.38

As Pokrovsky writes, the reforms contained in this paper had an educational as much as a political purpose. 'The new institutions themselves could change nothing, but they could serve as a school for public opinion: their significance was not so much political as pedagogical.'39 The institutions would aid the development of a public opinion which, in turn, could provide the necessary foundations for political liberty and a constitutional monarchy. In another

37 Proyekty, PP. 33, 34. 38 ibid., p. i i8. 39 'Aleksandr I', in Istoriya Rossii. . ., p. 44.



2I2 DAVID CHRISTIAN

paper written in I802, Speransky quoted Montesquieu in support of this approach to reform:

II est des institutions qui sont faits pour accelerer l'etablissement de l'opinion publique. Telles sont les institutions des Senats, d'un corps de noblesse et cet.

Les institutions ne garantissent pas la liberte par elle meme, mais en presentent au peuple des images de la liberte.. . elles entretiennent l'opinion publique et lui font prendre des accroissements necessaires jusqu'a ce qu'elle soit parvenue 'a ce degre' de maturite qui fait la force de la liberte et des loix.40

By the time he embarked on his great reform project of I809, Speransky's views had changed only on one matter, the timing of reform, for he now argued that Russian society had finally reached the point at which it was ready for freedom, a view he based on the rapidly multiplying signs that a genuine and assertive opinion was beginning to emerge.41 The people, he wrote, no longer have any respect for the government and are generally discontented with the existing order of things and thus, 'it is possible to conclude with certainty that the present system of government is no longer appro- priate for the spirit of society and that the time has come to change it and form a new order of things.' Indeed Speransky argued that reform was now not merely possible but also necessary, for the people now appeared to have the unity of purpose and the strength to resist or even overthrow the government.

Earthly kingdoms have their epochs of greatness and decline, and in each epoch the form of government must be in accordance with that level of civil development at which the state stands. Whenever the form of government lags behind or anticipates this level, it will be overthrown with more or less violence ... And thus, time is the first principle and source of all political renewal. No government which does not accord with the spirit of the times can stand against its all- powerful action.42

Russia now stood, he continued, in the 'epoch of autocracy, and without doubt, has a direct tendency towards freedom.'43

Accordingly, the I809 reform plan contained the 'external constitution' for a constitutional monarchy, in the faith that the neces-

40 Proyekty, p. 85. 41 This view had some foundation. At the end of I807, the Swedish ambassador wrote

to his government: 'Dissatisfaction with the Emperor is growing more and more, and with regard to this, people are saying things which are terrible to hear ... not only in private gatherings, but even in public meetings people talk of a change in the government.' Vigel' wrote: '. . . from famous courtiers to barely literate scribes, from generals to soldiers, everyone, while obeying, grumbled with dissatisfaction.' Both quotations are cited in S. B. Okun', Ocherki istoriiSSSR: konets XVIII-pervaya chetvert' XIXveka, Leningrad, I956, p. 171.

42 Proyekty, pp. 153-4- 43 ibid., p. i6o.



POLITICAL IDEALS OF MICHAEL SPERANSKY 2I3

sary 'internal constitution' already existed. It was an attempt, based on an over-optimistic assessment of the present situation, to implement Speransky's 'maximum' programme of I802, and its failure meant that its author had to return in later years to the far less ambitious programme sketched out in I 803. Nevertheless, the fact that he spent the rest of his years in the less ambitious task of administrative reforms within the autocratic system does not mean he ever abandoned the aims of I802, the creation of a monarchical government founded on law and limited by the will and power of the people. It means merely that he felt the time was not yet ripe for the fundamental constitutional reforms which this programme entailed.



the political ideals of michael speransky

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