[1801-1815 A.D.]
From 1806 to 1812 the preponderating influence over Alexander I was that of Speranski. Son of a village priest, educated in a seminary, and afterwards professor of mathematics and philosophy in the seminary of Alexander Nevski, Speranski became preceptor to the children of Alexis Kurakin, thanks to whom he quitted the ecclesiastical for a civil career, and became secretary to Trochtchinski, who was then chancellor of the imperial council. Later, after he had become director of the department of the interior under Prince Kotchubei, Speranski rose to the position of secretary of state and gained the complete confidence of the emperor. The favourites of the preceding period had all been imbued with English ideas; Speranski, on the contrary, loved France and manifested a particular admiration for Napoleon. These French sympathies, shared at the time by Alexander I, formed a new bond between the prince and the minister which was not severed until the rupture with Napoleon. “We know,” said Monsieur Bogdanovitch, “Alexander’s fondness for representative forms and a constitutional government, but this taste resembles that of a dilettante who goes into ecstacies over a fine painting. Alexander early convinced himself that neither Russia’s vast extent nor the constitution of civil society would permit the realisation of his dream. From day to day he deferred the execution of his utopian ideas, but delighted to discourse with his intimates upon the projected constitution and the disadvantages of absolutism. To please the emperor, Speranski ardently defended the principles of liberty, and by so doing exposed himself to accusations of anarchy and of having conceived projects dangerous to institutions that had received the consecration of time and custom.” Painstaking, learned, and profoundly patriotic and humane, he was the man best able to realise all that was practicable in the ideas of Alexander.
Speranski presented to the sovereign a systematic plan of reform. The imperial council received an extension of privileges. Composed as it was of the chief dignitaries of the state, it became in a measure the legislative power, and had the duty of examining new laws, extraordinary measures, and ministerial reports; it was in reality a sketch of a representative government. After the interview at Erfurt, during which Napoleon had showed him marked attention, Speranski entered into relations with the French legal writers, Locré, Legras, Dupont de Nemours, and made them correspondents of the legislative commission of the imperial council. The Code Napoleon was not adapted to any but a homogeneous nation emancipated from personal and feudal servitude, with a population whose members all enjoyed a certain equality before the law. Thus to Speranski the emancipation of the serfs was the corner-stone of regeneration. He dreamed of instituting a third estate, of limiting the number of privileged classes, and of forming the great aristocratic families into a peerage similar to that of England. He encouraged Count Stroinovski to publish his pamphlet, Rules to be Observed between Proprietors and Serfs. As early as 1809 he had decided that the holders of university degrees should have the advantage over all others in attaining the degrees of the tchin. Thus a doctor would at once enter the eighth rank, a master of arts the ninth, a candidate the tenth, and a bachelor the twelfth.
Like Turgot, the minister of Louis XVIII, and the Prussian reformer, Stein, Speranski had aroused the hostility of everyone. The nobility of court and ante-chamber, and all the young officials who wished to rise by favour alone were exasperated by the ukase of 1809; proprietors were alarmed at Speranski’s project for the emancipation of the serfs; the senators were irritated by his plans for reorganisation which would reduce the first governing body of the empire to the position of a supreme court of justice; and the high aristocracy was incensed at the boldness of a man of low condition, the son of a village priest. The people themselves complained at the increase in taxation, all those whose interests had been set aside united against the upstart; he was accused of despising the time-honoured institutions of Moscow and of having presented as a model to the Russians the Code Napoleon when the country was on the eve of war with France. The ministers Balachev, Armfelt, Guriev, Count Rostoptchin, Araktcheiev, and the grand duchess Catherine Pavlovna, sister of the emperor, influenced Alexander against him. Karamzin, the historian, addressed to the emperor an impassioned memoir on New and Old Russia, in which he stepped forth as the champion of serfdom, of the old laws, and of autocracy. Speranski’s enemy even went to the length of denouncing him as a traitor and an accomplice of France. In March, 1812, he was suddenly sent from the capital to Nijni-Novgorod and afterwards deported to a distant post where he was subjected to close surveillance. He was recalled in 1819, when passions had somewhat cooled, and was appointed governor of Siberia. In 1821 he returned to St. Petersburg, but did not recover his former position.
A new epoch now set in. The adversaries of Speranski, Armfelt, Schichkov, and Rostoptchin attained high positions, but the acknowledged favourite was Araktcheiev, the rough “corporal of Gachina,” born enemy to progress and reform and apostle of absolute dominion and passive obedience. He gained the confidence of Alexander, first by his devotion to the memory of Paul, next by his punctuality, his unquestioning obedience, his disinterestedness and habits of industry, and lastly by his ingenuous admiration for the “genius of the emperor.” He was the most trustworthy of servitors, the most imperious of superiors, and the most perfect instrument for a reaction. His influence was not at once exclusive. After having conquered Napoleon, Alexander looked upon himself as the liberator of nations. He had set Germany free; he dealt leniently with France and obtained for it a charter; he granted a constitution to Poland, with the intention of extending its benefit to Russia. Though the censorship of the press had recently forbidden the Viestnik slovesnosti to criticise, “the servants of his majesty,” Alexander had not entirely renounced his utopian ideas. English Protestant influence succeeded to the influence of France; French theatres were closed and Bible societies opened.
Nevertheless, this first period of favour for Araktcheiev soon became an epoch of sterility; though reaction had not yet set in there had at least come a decided pause. The reforms interrupted by the war of 1812 were not to be again resumed. The code of Speranski had come to an end and all efforts to compile one better suited to Russian traditions were of no avail.[f]
EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES; THE LYCÉE AND THE LIBRARY
On the 23rd of January of the year 1811 was promulgated the statute of the lycée of Tsarskoi Selo, which had been definitely worked out by secretary of state Speranski. The aim of the establishment of the lycée was the education of young men, and chiefly of those who were destined to fill the most important posts of the government service. The following circumstance was the primary cause of the foundation of this higher educational establishment: although the emperor did not interfere in the matter of the education of his younger brothers, the grand dukes Nicholas and Michael Pavlovitch, which was entirely left to the empress, Marie Feodorovna, a case soon presented itself where the emperor recognised the necessity of departing from the rule he had established. The widowed empress desired to send her sons to the university of Leipsic for the completion of their studies; this was, however, firmly opposed by the emperor, and instead he had the idea of establishing a lycée at Tsarskoi Selo, where his younger brothers could assist at the public lectures. A wing of the palace connected by a gallery with the chief building, was adapted to this purpose, and the solemn opening of the Tsarskoi Selo lycée took place on the 31st of October, 1811, in the presence of the emperor Alexander. It commenced with a thanksgiving service in the court chapel of Tsarskoi Selo, after which those present accompanied the clergy who made the tour of the edifice, sprinkling it with holy water. At the conclusion of the ecclesiastical ceremony, the imperial charter given to the lycée was read in the hall of the building, and the speeches began. Amongst them that of the adjunct professor Kunitzin earned the special approbation of the emperor for the art with which it avoided generalisations and dwelt on the beneficence of the founder. In conclusion, Alexander inspected the premises allotted to the students, and was present at their dinner table.
