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Russian Bureaucracy at the End of the Ancien Regime: The Imperial State Council, 1897-1915

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Werner E. Mosse
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The Russian ancien régime presents a paradox. Like other anciens régimes, it exhibited many signs of decay. The government had been unsuccessful in its major military enterprises ever since the Crimean War, its diplomatic defeats ranging from the Congress of Berlin to the Bosnian annexation crisis of 1909. Failure abroad was accompanied by signs of weakness within. The crisis of 1879-82 had shown the strength of internal opposition. In 1905, ignominious defeat at the hands of Japan proved to be the prelude to a revolution that shook tsarism to its foundations and clearly displayed its structural weaknesses. The last two “Autocrats of All Russia” were men of mediocre talent. The tsarist court, especially under Nicholas II, was ridden with scandals typical of a declining, unsure, and, indeed, frightened regime. Meanwhile, Russia’s ruling class, the hereditary landed nobility, improvident and debt-ridden, its landholdings reduced from 73.1 million desiatins in 1877 to a mere 43.2 million by 1911, was in headlong decline.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 616 - 632
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1980

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References

1. Figures quoted in Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., A History of Russia, 3rd ed. (New York, 1977), p. 1977 Google Scholar. For the decline of the dvorianstvo, see A. P., Korelin, “Rossiiskoe dvorianstvo i ego soslovnaia organizatsiia (1861-1904 gg.),” Istoriia SSSR, 1971, no. 5, pp. 56–81Google Scholar. Korelin calculates that, between 1861 and 1901, the hereditary nobility lost over 40 percent of its landholdings in European Russia (see ibid., p. 59).

2. Lenin observed that, from the 1880s onward, there took place in Russia, in the course of a few decades, “transformations which, in some older countries had taken centuries” (quoted in Solov'ev, Iu. B., Samoderzhavie i dvorianstvo v kontse XIX veka [Leningrad, 1973], p. 13 Google Scholar).

3. Fritz, Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism (London, 1972), pp. 74 ffGoogle Scholar.

4. Ibid., p. 91.

5. Ibid., p. 90.

6. Ibid., p. 92.

7. The collective attitudes of the Russian business community in the decade before the Revolution are discussed in Roosa, Ruth A., “Russian Industrialists look to the Future: Thoughts on Economic Development, 1906-1917,” in Curtiss, J. S., ed., Essays in Russian and Soviet History in Honor of G. T. Robinson (Leiden, 1963), p. 198–218.Google Scholar

8. Indeed it has been claimed that Nicholas I was the last true “Autocrat of All Russia.” “Après sa mort … nous voyons le pouvoir du monarque devenir un simple ressort du régime bureaucratique. L'Empereur n'est plus qu'une espèce de ‘fonctionnaire suprême'” (see Nol'de, B., L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution russes [Paris, 1928], p. 96)Google Scholar. Despite some elements of truth, this is a view which requires serious qualification.

9. Gregor, Alexinski, Modern Russia (London and Leipzig, 1913), pp. 179 ff.Google Scholar

10. Gurko, V. J., Features and Figures of the Past: Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II (Stanford, 1939), p. 203 Google Scholar.

11. Daniel T., Orlovsky, “Recent Studies on the Russian Bureaucracy,” Russian Review, 35, no. 4 (October 1976): 453 Google Scholar. The most important pioneering studies analyzed by Orlovsky are Torke, Hans-Joachim, “Das russische Beamtentum in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichtc, 13 (1967)Google Scholar; Torke, Hans-Joachim, “Continuity and Change in the Relations between Bureaurcracy and Society in Russia 1613-1861,” Canadian Slavic Studies, 5, no. 4 (Winter 1971)Google Scholar; Walter M., Pintner, “The Social Characteristics of the Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Bureaurcracy,” Slavic Review, 29, no. 3 (September 1970)Google Scholar; and P. A., Zaionchkovskii, “Vysshaia biurokratiia nakanune Krymskoi voiny,” Istoriia SSSR, 1974, no. 4.Google Scholar

12. Orlovsky, “Recent Studies,” p. 458.

13. Ibid. Korelin has noted that of 7, 243 men promoted between 1836 and 1843 to posts conferring hereditary nobility, 2, 558 were dvoriane, 4, 685 (64 percent) were drawn from other classes (particularly sons of priests and pochctnyc grashdane, but also of merchants and meshchane).

14. Orlovsky, “Recent Studies,” p. 460. A. P. Korelin, “Rossiiskoe dvorianstvo,” p. 60.

15. Orlovsky, “Recent Studies,” pp. 453 and 467. “The immediate historiographical problem,” writes Orlovsky, “becomes the stockpiling of empirical evidence on institutions and their personnel” (ibid., p. 455).

16. For the Imperial State Council, its organization and operation, see W. E., Mosse, “Aspects of Tsarist Bureaucracy: the State Council in the Late Nineteenth Century,” English Historical Review, 95, no. 375 (April 1980): 168–92.Google Scholar

17. But see W. E., Mosse, “Aspects of Tsarist Bureaucracy: Recruitment to the Imperial State Council 1855-1914,” Slaz'onic and East European Review, 57, no. 2 (April 1979): 240–54.Google Scholar

18. V. A. Leikina

19. Riasanovsky, History of Russia, p. 469.

20. One desiatin equals 2.7 acres.

21. The great majority in this category in fact owned more than ten thousand desiatins. There were very few with landholdings between five thousand and ten thousand desiatins.

22. Such service might be either in the ministry in St. Petersburg or in its provincial branches.

23. Almanakh sovremennykh russkikh deiatelei, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1897), and Levenson, M. L., ed., Gosudarstvennyi sovet (St. Petersburg, 1907; Petrograd, 1915).Google Scholar

24. Indeed, in a few cases, the same person changed from one designation to the other in successive compilations but such cases were exceptional.

25. The rare councillors who were made grafs during their period of service are counted in the category of their social origin.

26. There did, however, exist the ill-defined concept of the snaf, embracing the members of distinguished, influential, and normally wealthy families.

27. Men with the rare prefix “von” were not considered aristocrats.

28. For example, there are differences between the Baltic nobility among whom primogeniture prevailed (with regard to land but not titles) and the Russian aristocracy among whom it did not.

29. It must, of course, be borne in mind that, since members normally joined the Imperial State Council only toward the end of their official careers, trends shown actually reflect earlier changes in the education, careers, and selection of councillors.

30. They can be found in the Spiski grazhdanskim chinam pervykh trekh klassov, produced for restricted circulation annually from 1842 to 1915 by the Inspectorate Division of His Majesty's Own Chancellery.

31. These figures can be compared with those given by Zaionchkovskii for all officials in the second class of the Table of Ranks (which included the bulk of state councillors) for the year 1888. Of these, almost 70 percent did not own hereditary estates. Of those born landless, 11 percent married wives with hereditary estates, another 11 percent had acquired land by grant or purchase. Some 46 percent owned no arable land (see Zaionchkovskii, P. A., Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIX stoletiia [Moscow, 1970], p. 113 Google Scholar).

32. For the attempts of the last tsars to turn senior bureaucrats into landed proprietors, see Korelin, “Rossiiskoe dvorianstvo,” p. 61.

33. This categorization ignores features like usage, quality of soil, location, value, and so forth.

34. See, for example, the illuminating memoirs of a self-conscious member of the former group, Shidlovskii, S. J., Vospominaniia (Berlin, 1923), especially pp. 78 ff.Google Scholar, or the strident tirades against aristocratic magnates of the self-appointed (and landless) protagonist of the landed gentry, Prince V. P. Meshcherskii, found in Solov'ev, Samoderzhavie i dvorianstvo, p. 269. These are also interesting for the light they shed on the antagonism between gentry and bureaucracy. See also W. E. Mosse, “Imperial Favourite: V. P. Meshcherskii and the Grazhdanin,” Slavonic and East European Review (forthcoming).

35. A striking feature is the steadiness in the proportions of the three categories of landowners. Though the period studied is a relatively short one, it sufficed, as has been seen (given the age on appointment), for one complete turnover of membership. For the steadiness in the proportions—hardly due to deliberate selection policy—no explanation can be offered.

36. Pintner, “Social Characteristics.”

37. For the bitter hostility felt for senior chinovniks by spokesmen of the landed gentry, see Solov'ev, Samodershavie i dvorianstvo, pp. 265 ff. and 297; see also Gurko, Features and Figures, p. 174.

38. A. P. Korelin has calculated that at the end of the nineteenth century, 28.5 percent of men filling the highest positions in the state service (down to and including class 4 in the Table of Ranks) were nonnobles (presumably denoting nonnoble origin). In classes 5 to 8 inclusive, the percentage of nonnobles rose to 62.1 percent (figures quoted in Solov'ev, Samodershavie i dvorianstvo, p. 368).

39. A. A. Polovtsov, imperial secretary from 1883 to 1892, describes in his diaries the conscientious efforts of some very senior officials to find each year suitable candidates for appointment to the Imperial State Council. The elements of court favor or of political considerations, while not, of course, entirely absent, were, on the whole, secondary (see P. A. Zaionchkovskii, ed., Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretariia A. A. Polovtsova [Moscow, 1966]).

40. For an analysis of the tensions between officialdom and landed gentry and of the balance of interest groups within the Imperial State Council at the end of the nineteenth century, see W. E. Mosse, “Bureaucracy and Nobility in Russia at the end of the Nineteenth Century,” Historical Journal (forthcoming).