[98]. Michail Speranski (1772-1839), minister under Alexander I, was Governor of Siberia in 1819.
A second eccentric Governor, General Velyaminov, tried again. For two years he struggled hard at Tobolsk to root out the malpractices; and then, conscious of failure, he gave it all up and ceased to attend to business at all.
Others, more prudent than he, never tried the experiment: they made money themselves and let others do the same.
“I shall root out bribery,” said Senyavin, the Governor of Moscow, to a grey-bearded old peasant who had entered a complaint against some crying act of injustice. The old man smiled.
“What are you laughing at?” asked the Governor.
“Well, I was laughing, bátyushka; you must forgive me. I was thinking of one of our people, a great strong fellow, who boasted that he would lift the Great Cannon at Moscow; and he did try, but the cannon would not budge.”
Senyavin used to tell this story himself. He was one of those unpractical bureaucrats who believe that well-turned periods in praise of honesty, and rigorous prosecution of the few thieves who get caught, have power to cure the widespread plague of Russian corruption, that noxious weed that spreads at ease under the protecting boughs of the censorship.
Two things are needed to cope with it—publicity, and an entirely different organisation of the whole machine. The old national system of justice must be re-introduced, with oral procedure and sworn witnesses and all that the central Government detests so heartily.
§2
Pestel, one of the Governors of Western Siberia, was like a Roman proconsul, and was outdone by none of them. He carried on a system of open and systematic robbery throughout the country, which he had entirely detached from Russia by means of his spies. Not a letter crossed the frontier unopened, and woe to the writer who dared to say a word about his rule. He kept the merchants of the First Guild in prison for a whole year, where they were chained and tortured. Officials he punished by sending them to the frontier of Eastern Siberia and keeping them there for two or three years.