In the establishment of the ministries the question of censorship was not overlooked; it was transferred to the ministry of public instruction. In consequence of this arrangement a special statute was issued (July 9th, 1804), “not in order to place any restraint,” as is stated in the minister’s report, “upon the freedom of thought and of writing, but solely so as to take requisite measures against the abuse of such freedom.” The entire statute contained forty-seven paragraphs—a circumstance worthy of attention if we take into consideration the fact that the censorship statute presented in the year 1826 by A. S. Shishkov had grown to 230 paragraphs. According to the statute of Alexander I the censorship was designed chiefly to “furnish society with books and works contributing to the true enlightenment of minds and to the formation of moral qualities, and to remove books and works of contrary tendencies.” The censorship was entrusted to the university, constituting in its general jurisdiction the then newly organised department of the ministry of public instruction, which had the chief direction of schools. The basis of the functions of the censorship thus constituted was found in the three provisions following:
(1) Watchfulness that in the books and periodicals published, and in the pieces represented on the stage “there shall be nothing against religion, the government, morality, or the personal honour of any citizen.” (2) Care that in the prohibition of the publication or issue of books and works the committee shall be “guided by a wise indulgence, setting aside all biased interpretation of the works or of any part of them which might seem to merit prohibition; and wisdom to remember that when such parts seem subject to any doubt or have a double meaning, it is better to interpret them in the manner most favourable to the author than to prosecute him.” (3) “A discreet and wise investigation of truths concerning faith, mankind, the position of the citizen, the law, and all branches of the administration, are to be treated by the censorship not only in the most lenient manner, but should enjoy entire liberty of publication, as contributing to the progress of enlightenment.”
Such was the aspect of the censorship and statute which remained unchanged for more than twenty years, that is during the whole reign of the emperor Alexander. It was only from the year 1817, from the establishment of the ministry of public worship and of public instruction, that the censorship acquired a particularly irksome tendency which was in opposition to the liberal spirit of the statute: the most complete intolerance, fanaticism, and captiousness, which had been absent at the commencement of Alexander’s reign, then made their appearance.
In January, 1818 the emperor Alexander came for a short time to St. Petersburg, and Karamzin took advantage of his stay in order to present to him the eight volumes of the History of the Russian Empire which he had just published. “He received me in his private apartments, and I had the happiness of dining with him,” wrote Karamzin to his friend I. I. Dmitriev. “On the 1st of February my History of the Russian Empire was on sale; the edition was of three thousand copies, and in spite of the high price at which the work was sold (55 rubles, paper money, per copy), a month later not a copy was left at the booksellers.”[b]
FAILURE OF THE POLISH EXPERIMENT
The constitution granted to Poland in 1815, based the government on a tripartite division of power; the three estates of the realm being the king, a senate, and a house of representatives—the latter two being comprehended under the name of a diet. The executive was vested in the king, and in functionaries by him appointed. The crown was hereditary; it was the prerogative of the king to declare war, convoke, prorogue, or dissolve the diet. He was empowered to appoint a viceroy, who, unless a member of the royal family, was to be a Pole. The king or viceroy was assisted by a council of state and five responsible ministers, their several departments being instruction, justice, interior and police, war, finance. These five ministers were subordinate to the president of the council. Considering the exhaustion, humiliation, and misery to which Poland had been reduced, such a constitution was apparently a great boon, for it guaranteed civil, political, and religious freedom; but by the very nature of things it was foredoomed to destruction.
The first Polish diet assembled at Warsaw on the 27th of March, 1818. The grand duke Constantine, commander-in-chief of the Polish army, was elected a deputy by the faubourg of Praga, and during the session was obliged to renounce his privilege as a senator, because, by the terms of the constitution, no person could sit in both houses. He was elected by a majority of 103 votes to 6, an evident proof that the new reign had excited the liveliest hopes. The emperor arrived at Warsaw on the 13th of March; he devoted himself laboriously to the examination of state affairs, and on the 27th he opened the diet in person with a speech in the French language. He said, “the organisation which existed in vigorous maturity in your country permitted the instant establishment of what I have given you, by putting into operation the principles of those liberal institutions which have never ceased to be the object of my solicitude, and whose salutary influence I hope by the aid of God to disseminate through all the countries which He has confided to my care. Thus you have afforded me the means of showing my country what I had long since prepared for her, and what she shall obtain when the elements of a work so important shall have attained their necessary development.”
House of the Romanov Czars
There is no reason to doubt that Alexander cherished these intentions in his own sanguine but impractical way. The enfranchisement of the serfs of Esthonia, undertaken in 1802 and completed in 1816, and that of the serfs of Courland in 1817, exhibit the same principles. And when in 1819 the deputies of the Livonian nobility submitted to the approbation of the emperor a plan to pursue the same course with the serfs of their province, the following was his remarkable reply: “I am delighted to see that the nobility of Livonia have fulfilled my expectations. You have set an example that ought to be imitated. You have acted in the spirit of our age, and have felt that liberal principles alone can form the basis of the people’s happiness.”