During the emperor’s stay in Moscow, the poet Pushkin, who had been banished to the village of Mikhailovski, was recalled. From that moment he regained his lost liberty, besides which the emperor Nicholas said to him: “In future you are to send me all you write—henceforth I will be your censor.”
CHANGES IN INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION
On the 18th of October, 1826, the emperor Nicholas returned to St. Petersburg; although his accession to the throne did not constitute the opening of a new era for Russia, yet certain changes were made in the system of administration which had prevailed during the last decade of the reign of Alexander I. After Count Araktcheiev had been relieved of the management of the general affairs of the state, it was to be foreseen that he would not remain long at the head of the direction of the military settlements. And thus it turned out. In the spring of 1826 Count Araktcheiev, on account of illness, was given leave to go abroad. In the report presented by him on this occasion to the emperor he announced to him economies of more than 32,000,000 rubles made on the military settlements, and concluded his epistle by observing, “Those impartial judges—posterity and the future—will pronounce a just sentence on all things.”
On the return of Count Araktcheiev in the autumn from his travels abroad he did not again take up his duties. In accordance with a ukase which then followed, the staff office of the military settlements was united to the general staff of his imperial majesty, under the jurisdiction of its adjutant-general Baron Diebitsch. At the same time the Novgorod military settlement passed under the entire direction of General Prince Schahovski, who was nominated commander of the grenadier corps; the Kherson and Iekaterinoslav settlements were put under the supervision of their chief, Count Vitt (who was also commander of a separate corps), while the settlements in the villages of the Ukraine and Mohilev governments remained under the jurisdiction of their former chiefs, who bore the rank of commanders of divisions. Count Araktcheiev, when he had finally bidden adieu to his administrative career, settled on his Georgian estates, where he died in 1834.
Having delivered Russia from the administrative guardianship of Count Araktcheiev, the emperor Nicholas, in addition, delivered Russian instruction from the influence of Michael Leontievitch Magnitzki. On the 18th of May, 1826, a ukase was issued in which it was stated that “the curator of the University of Kazan and of its educational district, the actual councillor of state Magnitzki, is by our command relieved of his functions and of his position as member of the administration of schools.” But the matter was not limited to this ukase. Magnitzki continued to live in Kazan and in accordance with his character he continued to intrigue as usual and indirectly to influence the university he had left. General Jeltukhin, who had been commissioned to make a detailed revision of the Kazan University, brought this fact to the emperor’s knowledge. Nicholas’ reply was rapid and decisive; a courier was sent with orders to the governor to arrest Magnitzki and send him to Revel under the surveillance of the commandant. Magnitzki lived there six years, having given his promise not to absent himself.
An equally sad fate overtook the champion and imitator of Magnitzki, Dmitri Pavlovitch Runitch, who had filled the office of curator of the St. Petersburg educational district. By a ukase of the 7th of July, 1826, Runitch was deprived of his functions and of the position of member of the chief administration of schools, for his incompetence in the matter of the direction of the St. Petersburg educational district. The requital experienced by Runitch for his educational labours was a terrible one; he languished beneath the consequences for sixteen years and died in 1860 in the conviction that he had formerly saved Russia, and was suffering for the good work he had accomplished in the University of St. Petersburg.
Reforms in the Administration of Justice
The lamentable condition of the administration of justice in Russia was one of the first subjects to which the careful attention of the emperor Nicholas was directed. In a speech pronounced by the sovereign many years later, in 1833, before the council of state, Nicholas Pavlovitch thus expressed himself: