Mikhail Speransky

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The Russian statesman and reformer Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranski (1772-1839) is known for his governmental reforms, based on the doctrine of separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers.

Mikhail Speranski was born on Jan. 12, 1772, to a village priest and received his education in a theological seminary. He taught in an ecclesiastical institution but soon transferred to the civil service. Because of his personality, intelligence, and capacity for work, as well as the patronage of the princes Alexander and Alexis Kurakin and Count Victor Kochubey, Speranski had a rapid rise and a brilliant career. At the request of the minister of interior, Kochubey, in 1803 Speranski prepared one of his first drafts of constitutional reforms. In 1808 Czar Alexander I appointed him assistant minister of justice and in 1810 secretary of state. Speranski's influence with Alexander was very great from 1809 to the beginning of 1812. A contemporary wrote: "M. Speranski is the emperor's factotum, a kind of minister of innovations. He is not allied with anyone. His influence extends to everything."

Government Reforms

In 1808 Alexander commissioned Speranski to draft a plan of constitutional reform. Speranski recommended reforms of the government based on the doctrine of separation of powers - legislative, executive, and judicial - all of them emanating from the czar. The right to vote was to be given to property owners. However, his reforms overlooked the emancipation of the serfs and excluded the servile population from participation in government. Although he leaned toward the eventual abolition of serfdom, he nevertheless realized the obstacles facing this action.

Alexander rejected his recommendations of separation of powers, but he accepted his idea of a state council, one suffering from obvious limitations. It was an appointed body; its decisions were not binding on the emperor; and it was denied the prerogative of legislative initiative. But from the point of view of constitutional theory the creation of a state council was significant. For the first time in Russian history a clear-cut distinction was made between a law, that is, a measure examined by the state council and approved by the czar, and an executive order.

Czar Alexander approved Speranski's legislation of 1810-1811 for the reconstruction of the executive departments. Speranski was also responsible for raising the civil service standards: an appointment to positions above a specified rank was conditional on the passing of a stiff examination or the holding of a college degree.

Speranski's financial program was very unpopular because it called for the suspension of issues of paper currency, the curtailment of expenditures, increases in direct and indirect taxation, and an emergency tax on incomes derived from landed estates. It is safe to conclude that these infringements of the privileges of the bureaucratic and landowning classes, rather than any organized opposition to Speranski's constitutional views, hastened his fall from power during the second half of Alexander's reign.

In 1826, however, Speranski was appointed by Nicholas I to a committee formed to codify Russian law. Under his able leadership the committee's work was fruitful in 1833 with the publication of the complete collection of the laws of the Russian Empire, which contained 35,993 enactments. Count Speranski died in St. Petersburg on Feb. 23, 1839.

Further Reading

Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772-1839 (1957), is an excellent biography and the only one in English. Additional material on Speranski is in Allen McConnell, Tsar Alexander I: Paternalist Reformer (1970).

Additional Sources

Raeff, Marc, Michael Speransky, statesman of imperial Russia, 1772-1839, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979.

(1772 - 1839), Russian statesman, one-time adviser to Tsar Alexander I.

Mikhail Speransky attempted during the years 1807 - 1811 to influence the Russian monarch in the direction of instituting major political reform in Russia's government. Only a few of his carefully drafted plans ever saw the light of day.

Born into a family of a poor Russian Orthodox clergyman, Speransky, called by one Russian historian a "self-made man," won the attention of the tsar and rose to become a count. He was considered brilliant and well-read in the study of European governmental structures, becoming in effect Alexander's unofficial prime minister. Working in secret (on the tsar's orders), he drew up a number of reforms. His idea, which the tsar evidently did not wholly endorse, was to retain a strong monarchy but reform it so that it would be based strictly on law and legal procedures of the type found in some European monarchies of the time.

Speransky's reform plans did not closely resemble, say, the English or French governmental systems. Yet while Speransky could probably not be considered a liberal reformer on West European terms, by Russian standards his reformism bordered on the radical. This made Speransky extremely unpopular with the tsar's court, causing the tsar to keep such plans under wraps lest they unduly alienate his court.

In 1809 and 1812, Speransky drew up the draft of a Russian constitution that bore some resemblance to those of West European monarchies. In one of his projects Speransky even proposed separation of the powers of legislature (in the Duma), judiciary, and the governmental administration. Yet all three were to branch out from the crown. Suffrage would be based on property, at least in the beginning. Election of the Duma would be indirect and necessitate a cautious, four-stage electoral process. Speransky also supported a program for future abolition of serfdom in Russia, reform that he viewed as crucial for any serious top-to-bottom governmental change.

Historians note that certain measures enacted in 1810 - 1811 brought "fundamental change to the executive departments of government." Personal responsibility, it is noted, was to be imposed on ministers, while the functions of executive departments were precisely delimited. Unwarranted interference with legislative and judicial functions would be eliminated. Comprehensive rules were actually enacted for the administration of the ministries.

Although Speransky's efforts to reform the antiquated Russian court system failed, his administrative reforms overall modernized the whole bureaucratic machine. These structures remained in effect until the Bolshevik coup d'état, or October Revolution, of late 1917.

After serving as the tsar's close adviser for some five years, Speransky left St. Petersburg as the appointed Governor-General of the Siberian region. In that post he continued to author reform plans. Some of these were adopted and changed the governmental structure of that large administrative area. But it was in the period of his service as the tsar's adviser that Speransky made his name in the annals of Russian history, especially as recounted by the famous early nineteenth-century Russian historian, Nikolai M. Karamzin.

In 1821 Speransky returned to the Russian capital to become a founder of the Siberian Committee for Russian Affairs Beyond the Urals.

Bibliography

Raeff, Marc. (1956). Siberia and the Reform of 1822. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Raeff, Marc. (1957). Michael Speransky, Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772 - 1839. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1963). A History of Russia. New York: Oxford University Press.

—ALBERT L. WEEKS

Mikhail Speransky

Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky (Russian: Михаи́л Миха́йлович Спера́нский) ( January 12 [O.S. January 1] 1772 - February 23 [O.S. February 11] 1839) was probably the greatest of Russian reformers in the period between Peter the Great and Alexander II. A close advisor to Tsar Alexander I of Russia and later to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, he is sometimes called the father of Russian liberalism.

Contents 1 Early life and reforms 2 Downfall under Alexander I 3 Later career under Nicholas I 4 Title of Count 5 Death 6 External links

Early life and reforms

Speransky was the son of a village priest and spent his early days at the ecclesiastical seminary in St Petersburg, where he rose to be professor of mathematics and physics. His brilliant intellectual qualities attracted the attention of the government, and he became secretary to Prince Kurakin. He soon became known as the most competent of the imperial officials.

The most important phase of his career opened in 1808, when the emperor Alexander I took him with him to the Congress of Erfurt and put him into direct communication with Napoleon, who described him as the only clear head in Russia and at the insistence of Alexander had many conversations with him on the question of Russian administrative reform. Speransky's projects of reform envisaged a constitutional system based on a series of dumas, the cantonal assembly (volost) electing the duma of the district, the dumas of the districts electing that of the province or government, and these electing the Duma of the empire. As mediating power between the autocrat and the Duma there was to be a nominated council of state.

This plan, worked out by Speransky in 1809, was for the most part stillborn, only the council of the empire coming into existence in January 1810; but it nonetheless dominated the constitutional history of Russia in the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. The Duma of the empire created in 1905 bears the name suggested by Speransky, and the institution of local self-government (the zemstvo) in 1864 was one of the reforms proposed by him. Speransky's labors also bore fruit in the constitutions granted by Alexander to Finland and Poland.

Downfall under Alexander I

From 1809 to 1812 Speransky was all-powerful in Russia, so far as any minister of a sovereign so suspicious and so unstable as Alexander could be so described. He replaced the earlier favorites, members of the unofficial committee, in the tsar's confidence, becoming practically sole minister, all questions being laid by him alone before the emperor and usually settled at once by the two between them. Even the once all-powerful war-minister Count Arakcheyev was thrust into the background. Speransky used his immense influence for no personal ends. He was an idealist, but in this very fact lay the seeds of his failure.

Alexander was also an idealist, but his ideals were apt to centre in himself; his dislike and distrust of talents that overshadowed his own were disarmed for a while by the singular charm of Speransky's personality, but sooner or later he was bound to discover that he himself was regarded as but the most potent instrument for the attainment of that ideal end, a regenerated Russia, which was his minister's sole preoccupation. In 1810 and the first half of 1811 Speransky was still in high favor, and was the confidant of the emperor in that secret diplomacy which preceded the breach of Russia with Napoleon.

He had, however, committed one serious mistake. An ardent freemason himself, he conceived in 1809 the idea of reorganizing the order in Russia, with the special object of using it to educate and elevate the Orthodox clergy. The emperor agreed to the first steps being taken, namely the suppression of the existing lodges; but he was naturally suspicious of secret societies, even when ostensibly admitted to their secrets, and Speransky's abortive plan only resulted in adding the clergy to the number of his enemies.

On the eve of the struggle with Napoleon, Alexander, conscious of his unpopularity, conceived the idea of making Speransky his scape-goat, and so conciliating that Old Russian sentiment which would be the strongest support of the autocratic tsar against revolutionary France. Speransky's own indiscretions gave the final impulse. He was surrounded with spies who reported, none too accurately, the ministers somewhat sharp criticisms of the emperor's acts; he had even had the supreme presumption to advise Alexander not to take the chief command in the coming campaign.

A number of persons in the entourage of the emperor, including the grand duchess Catherine, Fessler, Karamzin, Rostopchin and the Swedish general Baron Armfeldt, intrigued to involve him in a charge of treason. Alexander did not credit the charge, but he made Speransky responsible for the unpopularity incurred by himself in consequence of the hated reforms and the still more hated French policy, and on the 17th-29th of March 1812 dismissed him from office.

Later career under Nicholas I

Reinstated in the public service in 1816, he was appointed governor-general of Siberia, for which he drew up a new scheme of government, and in 1821 entered the council of state.

In 1826, Speranski was appointed by Nicholas I to the head of the Second Section of the Imperial Chancellery, a committee formed to codify Russian law. Under his able leadership the committee's work was fruitful, with the 1833 publication of the complete collection of the laws of the Russian Empire, which contained 35,993 enactments. This codification, called the 'Full Collection of Laws' (Polnoje Sobranije Zakonov), was presented to Nicholas I and formed the basis for the 'Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire' (Svod Zakonov Rossiskoj Imperii), the positive law valid for the Russian Empire. Speransky's liberal ideas were subsequently scrutinised and elaborated by Konstantin Kavelin and Boris Chicherin.

Title of Count

His title of Count was awarded to him in 1839, with his daughter being permitted by special Imperial decree to carry the title into her marriage in the family of Prince Mikhail Cantacuzène.

Death

Speransky died in St. Petersburg on February 23, 1839.

External links

• Extensive Russian biography
• Speransky on Law

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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