Russia by Philip Longworth

Author:Philip Longworth [LONGWORTH, PHILIP]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780312360412
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

The besetting imperial dilemma of St Petersburg’s bureaucrats at that time was whether to devolve power in the Empire or to centralize it. Should governors be accorded the freedom to act as local circumstances demanded, which would impede centralization and the enforcement of legal rights? Or should the government insist that all regions comply with the law laid down by St Petersburg, which would promote officialism and insensitivity to local conditions and sentiment?

In Finland and in Russia’s other Baltic territories imperial rule continued to be marked by a certain complaisance, although when Alexander had confirmed the rights and privileges of Estland and Livland he had taken care to add the proviso ‘insofar as they are consistent with the general decrees and laws of our State.’ 15 But trying to draft laws that would be equally appropriate to the educated populations of the western territories, the Russians of the heartlands, and the tribesmen of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia turned out to be much like attempting to square the circle.

Alexander had grappled with ideas of constitutional reform since the beginning of the century. He had corresponded with Thomas Jefferson about them, consulted John Quincy Adams, and discussed them with his inner circle of able advisers. These included Novosiltsov, who wanted to redesign the Empire as a federation of twelve huge provinces, each with a bicameral ruling council (duma); Czartoryski, architect of the well-intentioned but unappreciated arrangement for Poland; and Mikhail Speranskii, who was to be looked back on as the most visionary reformer of all.

One solution to the problem of running so vast and variegated an empire equitably was federalism. But the desperate war against Napoleonic France and the threat of revolution that loomed over Europe afterwards discouraged the idea of dismantling the autocracy, so the proposed federalist solution had been diluted, reduced to the creation of a few super-provinces, in central Russia, the north-west (including the Baltic) and the south (where New Russia, Bessarabia and the Caucasus were brought together). There was also some tinkering with provincial institutions, but Speranskii himself was sent away to be governor of Penza province, and then to Siberia as governor-general.

Nowhere was the fundamental problem of empire more intractable than there. Much has been made of the memoirist Vigel’s comparison of Siberia with a remote estate of a wealthy landowner who appreciates it for the extra income it brings and the interesting objects it yields but otherwise pays it no attention. That the centre interfered so little is hardly surprising given the difficulty of communication. The furthest point on land was nearly 9,000 miles from St Petersburg. Seaborne communications were quicker, but as late as the 1840s it was to take eighteen months for a reply to a query sent from New Archangel on Sitka Island in the Gulf of Alaska to arrive from St Petersburg. 16

However, it did not seem reasonable to devolve responsibilities on to the indigenous leadership of a society which, as in Yakutia, respected shamans who worked their curative spells

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