Lieven D. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 2: Imperial Russia, 1689-1917

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remained. During the eighteenth century its size increased in conjunction

with a growing professionalism, thereby providing a springboard for the next

major change in the subordinate organs under Alexander I.

Ministerial government

AlexanderI (r.1801–25) established Russia’s ministerialsystem whichlasted until

the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in February 1917.

The young emperor

initially toyed with the idea of constitutional change but soon showed a pref-

erence for administrative reform which he saw as more essential for effective

government and Russia’s modernisation and less threatening to his autocratic

power.

Alexander replaced what remained of Peter’s collegiate system with min-

istries, a step which reinforced centralised power. He intended the ministries

to be the highest subordinate organs headed by individual ministers who were

appointed by and responsible to the emperor alone. The initial ministries were

War, Navy, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Internal Affairs, Finance, Commerce, and

Education. The number of ministries did not differ greatly until the beginning

of the twentiethcentury. The founding of a ministerial system with its relatively

clear responsibilities, specialised functions and internal structure represented

an important step in the evolution of Russia’s subordinate organs. Moreover,

unlike the collegiate system where decisions were at least theoretically taken

collectively within each college, a single minister directed a ministry, thereby

increasing administrative efﬁciency.

Regular ministerial reports, written and oral, constituted the heart of the

newsystem. Ministers met individuallywith the emperorto deliver oral reports

and make policy decisions on matters at least theoretically directly related only

to their own ministerial portfolio. The emperors preferred this arrangement

for it provided them the opportunity to exercise direct personal inﬂuence

over the administration of the empire. In addition, the emperors ensured

for themselves a central and pivotal role in the running of government by

ensuring they were the only ones privy to the activities and policies of all the

ministries. Ministers also had the right to propose legislation and to participate

in discussions over proposed laws.

The establishment of the ministerial system laid the groundwork for the

emergence of a large and functionally differentiated bureaucratic apparatus.

Alexander I and his successor, Nicholas I (r. 1825–55) also established univer-

sities and lyc

ees to train future high-level bureaucrats, increasingly seen as

7 J. Hartley, Alexander I (London: Longman, 1994); S.V. Mironenko, Samoderzhavie i reformy:

politicheskaia bor’ba v Rossii v nachale XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1989).

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the key to better government. Under Nicholas I and Alexander II (r. 1855–81)

the bureaucratic machine grew immensely in size and became more profes-

sional, especially at the higher and middle ranks.

In 1847 Count S. S. Uvarov

bemoaned that the bureaucracy as an institution had acquired a sovereignty of

its own capable of rivalling that of the monarch. The increasing bureaucrati-

sation had created a noble bureaucratic elite which the landed nobility viewed

as a threat to its interests and its access to the monarch. As the nineteenth

century progressed, much of the bureaucratic class came to regard the landed

nobility as a relic of a bygone era and an obstacle to the further development

of Russia. Beginning already during the reign of Catherine II and intensifying

in the nineteenth century the landed nobility fought with the bureaucracy for

inﬂuence over the emperor. At the same time, many of the senior ofﬁcials came

from land-owning families. Accompanying this process was increasing empha-

sis on the bureaucracy’s role as catalyst for social and/or economic change,

which began to take serious shape as a result of Catherine II’s thoughts on

enlightened despotism and gained irreversible momentum with the Emanci-

pation of the Serfs and the Great Reforms under Alexander II. Consequently

the bureaucracy’s view of itself began to evolve. The bureaucrats of the sev-

enteenth and eighteenth centuries regarded themselves as personal servitors

of the tsar. By the last half of the nineteenth century the class of professional

bureaucrats felt a genuine institutional loyalty, an esprit de corps. This insti-

tutional identity and the idea of service to the state as public ofﬁcials began

to compete with the person of the monarch for the bureaucracy’s ultimate

loyalty.

Modernisation from above, however, created administrative problems

between the subordinate organs. Given the absence of public forums or parlia-

mentary institutions, debates over the desirability and form of modernisation,

and over how to handle its socioeconomic consequences took place within

the bureaucratic structures, posing a challenge to bureaucratic efﬁciency.

The best-known cleavage emerged between the two most powerful subor-

dinate organs, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

One of the greatest struggles between them dealt with labour issues around

the turn of the twentieth century and had its origins in the priorities of the

8 See: W. B. Lincoln, Nicholas I: Autocrat of All the Russias (London: University of Indi-

ana Press, 1977)andThe Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change

(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990); L. N. Viskochov, Imperator Nikolai I (St

Petersburg: Izd. SPbU, 2003).

9 H. W. Whelan, Alexander III and The State Council (New Brunswick: Rutgers University

Press, 1982); D. T. Orlovsky, The Limits of Reform: The Ministry of Internal Affairs in Imperial

Russia, 1802–1881 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

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respective ministries. The prime responsibility of the Ministry of Internal

Affairs was the maintenance of public orderthroughout the Empire. Moreover,

many aristocrats, who believed that the autocracy had a responsibility to look

after the wellbeing of the less fortunate in Russian society (namely the peas-

ants and workers) staffed this ministry. They regarded worker disturbances,

which became more frequent towards the end of the nineteenth century, as

the logical consequence of the labourers’ poor working conditions and pay,

and therefore saw the factory owners as exploiters. While meeting striking

workers with force, the Ministry of Interior supported policies which aimed

at improving the lot of the worker at the expense of the emerging class of

industrialists.

The Ministry of Finance’s primary responsibility was the rapid indus-

trialisation of Russia, which its head Sergei Witte regarded as essential if

Russia was to avoid becoming a second-rate power and provider of natu-

ral resources to the great powers of Europe. To achieve this goal a Russian

class of industrialists was needed, as was foreign investment. Witte regarded

the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ view on the labour problem as damaging

for the realisation of the greater goal of industrialisation. The Ministry of

Internal Affairs responded that the strikes derived from the workers’ condi-

tions and posed a serious political danger. In the absence of co-ordination

from above these two ministries spent much time and energy either waging

a bureaucratic struggle to gain control over the labour problem or follow-

ing their respective and ultimately contradictory labour policies. One result

of this administrative chaos was the large worker rebellions during the 1905

Revolution.

The conclusion can be reached that modernisation from above strength-

ened the process of atomisation of the ministries, each of which pursued its

own policies, purpose and courses of action. This is not to say, however, that

ministers were at each other’s throats most of the time. Inevitably they under-

stood the necessity of collaboration in most cases. A set of informal, unwritten

procedures to regulate their relationship with each other emerged over time.

In addition whenever a threat to overall ministerial integrity emerged, such as

excessive inﬂuence of a ﬁgure outside of government, the bureaucratic esprit de

corps worked to check it. The ministries had been established with the purpose

of reorganising government into a single administrative system. By the last

quarter of the nineteenth century the ministerial bureaucracy was capable of

making and implementing policy but also had evolved into separate organisa-

tions, each with its own purpose which strengthened the need for stable and

efﬁcient supreme co-ordinating organs.

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Supreme organs (Verkhovnye organy)

From the establishment of the collegiate system to the 1917 February Revo-

lution, the imperial government faced the challenges of co-ordination, unity

and supervision of the subordinate organs. Peter founded the Senate on 22

February 1711. His handwritten decree failed to enunciate clearly this supreme

organ’s responsibilities, save one. He charged the Senate with administering

the empire when he absented himself from the capital to command troops

in the ﬁeld. That same day Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. A

second decree dated March of that same year to a signiﬁcant degree delineated

the Senate’s duties. In the period before the establishment of the collegiate

system, the Senate was charged with increasing the amount of taxes collected,

improving tax collecting organs, rooting out corruption, and supervision of the

state’s expenditure. It could issue its own directives which all institutions were

required to obey. The Senate was indeed governing, exercising the executive,

legislative and judicial powers of the monarch.

With the establishment of the collegiate system, the Senate lost administra-

tive duties, such as tax collection, and received the responsibility of a supreme

organ – co-ordination and supervision of the subordinate organs, the colleges.

The Senate combined this with its role as a higher judicial body which was

to provide a degree of conformity in the interpretation of the empire’s laws.

The presidents of the colleges were members of the Senate until 1722 when

Peter came to the conclusion that having the heads of subordinate organs

participate in the supreme organs whose responsibility was oversight of those

same subordinate organs was counterproductive and discontinued the prac-

tice. The Senate’s performance did not satisfy Peter, who eventually appointed

a procurator-general who represented him in the Senate and was responsible

to him alone. The procurator-general’s role was supervisory, conﬁrming the

Senate’s decrees and ensuring it carried out its duties and the emperor’s will.

In the period between Peter’s death in 1725 and the enthronement of Cather-

ine II in 1762 the supreme organs existed in a state of great ﬂux, reﬂecting a lack

of institutionalisation and dependence on the attitudes of individual monarchs

and high servitors. Under Catherine I (r. 1725–7) and Peter II (r. 1727–30) the

Senate’s role as a supreme organ diminished with the establishment of the

Supreme Privy Council, the intended co-ordinating point of the subordinate

organs. Anna Ivanovna (r. 1730–40), suspicious of the Supreme Privy Council

given its members’ attempt to limit her autocratic power at the beginning of

her reign, in 1731 abolished it. The newfocal point of the administration became

Her Majesty’s Cabinet. Elizabeth (r. 1741–62) abolished this body and restored

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manypowers to the Senate, thoughreal power of co-ordinationremainedin the

hands of those close to the empress herself. Nonetheless, the Senate reviewed

and approved most of the legislation of her reign. These changes in the

supreme organs reﬂected a three-way battle for real power. One between the

aristocracy and the bureaucratic bodies, one between the aristocracy and the

autocracy, and another between the autocrat and the growing bureaucracy.

Catherine II was keen to reorganise the central organs which to her mind

sorely lacked co-ordination and efﬁciency. Her adviser, Nikita Panin, stressed

the need to found some form of imperial council capable of co-ordination

and to establish an effective relationship between the monarch, the Senate

and other governmental institutions. Taking into consideration Panin’s views,

the empress subordinated the Senate to the procurator-general once again,

believing like Peter the Great before her, that a supervisor of the supervisory

body would create the conditions for a more smooth and uniﬁed central

government. Nevertheless by the end of her reign the continuous need for an

effective mechanism capable of co-ordinating government was clear, especially

given the growing tendency to see change in society as the responsibility of

the government.

Co-ordination of the subordinate organs, the relationship between the

supreme organs themselves and more speciﬁcally between them and the

sovereign, were at the base of Alexander I’s major administrative reforms.

His decrees of 1801 and 1802 fundamentally changed the Senate’s role. The

body received the right of judicial review and supervision of the highest gov-

ernment organs, including the newly established ministries. Given his ﬂeeting

interest in constitutional change, Alexander gave senators the right to make

remonstrances to the emperor and stipulated that no bill could become law

without its approval. When the Senate exercised this right soon after, Alexan-

der rescinded it. Clearly the supreme organs were to occupy themselves with

co-ordination of the subordinate organs, not with infringement on the auto-

cratic power. The founding of ministerial government and of the State Council

(1810) led to the sidelining of the Senate in practice. For the remainder of the

nineteenth century it was a High Court of Review and along with other insti-

tutions exercised a degree of administrative supervision.

Yet the problem of effective supreme organs remained. Count Mikhail M.

Speranskii, Alexander’s close adviser and regarded by many as the father of

the modern imperial bureaucracy, argued that ‘in the present system of gov-

ernment there is no institution for the general deliberation of governmental

affairs from the point of view of their legislative aspect. The absence of such

an institution leads to major disorders and confusion in all aspects of the

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administration.’

Recognising this, Alexander founded the State Council. On

the day of its inauguration he drew attention to the reasons for taking this

step:

The order and uniformity of state affairs require that there be a single focal

point for their general consideration. In the present structure of our adminis-

tration, we do not have such an institution. In such a vast state as this, how can

various parts of the administration function with harmony and success when

each moves in its own direction and when these directions nowhere lead to a

central focus? Given the great variety of state affairs, the personal activity of

the supreme power alone cannot maintain this unity. Beyond this, individuals

die and only institutions can survive and, in the course of centuries, preserve

the basis of a state ...TheStateCouncilwill form the focal point of all affairs

of the central administration.

The intention was that the establishment of the State Council, which should

be considered a major development in the history of the central government

of the empire, was to end the search for a supreme co-ordinating organ begun

some one hundred years previously under Peter I.

The emperor appointed the State Council’s membership which consisted

of sitting ministers and other high dignitaries. The body had no right to initiate

legislation, which remained the prerogative of the autocrat and ministers, but

it could make recommendations on legislation sent to it, which the emperor

could accept or reject. In theory no legislative project could be presented to the

emperor without the State Council’s approval. Practice proved otherwise. At

times the emperor and ministers chose or established alternative ways to push

through legislation if the path through the State Council was considered too

difﬁcult. Nevertheless, the State Council did provide a forum for the debate,

reformulation and preparation of legislation before its delivery to the emperor.

Russia’s elite hoped the founding of the State Council would place the gov-

ernmental and legislative process on some form of legal basis. With the State

Council, Russia was to be an orderly autocratic state ﬁxed on a foundation

of law and legal process. But the continued existence of the autocracy under-

mined in practice this supreme organ. Alexander III (r. 1881–94), by a decree

dated 5 November 1885, legalised what had been long going on in practice.

According to the decree, all commands of the emperor carried the full force of

legality. The State Council’srole in the legislative process was fatally weakened.

The upshot was the strengthening of the tendency on the part of ministers

10 Quoted in Whelan, Alexander III, p. 39.

11 Whelan, Alexander III, pp. 39–40.

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to avoid seeking support amongst members of the supreme organs or fellow

ministers and to rely on the emperor’s support alone to obtain passage of

legislation.

Alexander I, with two decrees dated 1802 and 1812, founded the Committee

of Ministers. Its most important short-term responsibility was to govern the

empire while he was at the front ﬁghting Napoleon. The committee was

charged with overall co-ordination of administrative issues as they emerged

amongst the various subordinate organs and therefore could not become a

supreme co-ordinating organ. A chairman headed the committee, a position

which by the middle of the nineteenth century carried no great authority.

When Sergei Witte was removed from his post as minister of ﬁnance in 1903

and made chairman he considered it a demotion. The emperor in theory could

attend the committee, but almost never did so until its dissolution in 1906,

thereby further weakening the committee’s authority. Ministerial disunity

and the committee’s weak institutional authority limited its ability to have any

real effect. In any case the available evidence does not show that Alexander

even wanted the committee to play a cabinet-style role. On the one hand,

he wished that ministers co-ordinate policies and consult each other before

presenting bills for his consideration. But his continued practice of meeting

in private with individual ministers undermined any moves in that direction.

The committee did have the right to draw the monarch’s attention to the need

for a particular law or policy.

Alexander I initially showed a fair amount of interest in the Committee of

Ministers, which enabled it to enjoy a relatively prominent role. However, in

the ﬁnal years of his reign he showed a decreasing inclination to rule, preferring

to give greater authority to favourites. By deciding policy and making laws in

meetings with individual ministers, Alexander or his current favourite greatly

undercut the authority of the supreme institutions. Despite his intention to

establish a degree of legality, routine and institutionalisation, Alexander fol-

lowed in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors, Peter I and Catherine II,

and succumbed to the desire to rely primarily on personalities and pay less

attention to institutions. Peter’s legacy of ‘institutional order as well as one of

individual wilfulness’ remained until the end of the empire.

Nicholas I showed little trust for the supreme and subordinate organs estab-

lished by Alexander. He preferred to govern the empire through ad hoc com-

mittees dedicated to speciﬁc issues and through His Majesty’s Own Personal

Chancellery which Paul I had founded in 1796. By placing the chancellery above

12 P. Dukes, The Making of Russian Absolutism 1613–1801 (Longman: London, 1982). p. 122.

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the supreme and subordinate organs and under his direct control, Nicholas fur-

ther centralised power in his hands and in practice stripped the State Council,

Senate and Committee of Ministers of their more signiﬁcant functions. In the

aftermath of the Decembrist revolt Nicholas believed he was ﬁghting a two-

front war. One was against the increasing penetration into Russia of Western

ideas dangerous to the autocracy which required greater control over society.

The other was against the enemy within the autocracy itself – the bureaucracy.

As the bureaucracy increased in size, Russian monarchs struggled to maintain

personal control over it and to overcome bureaucratic inertia which seemed

increasingly to block the imperial will. Nicholas’s response to this was the pro-

motion of the chancellery, which to his mind provided for greater monarchical

control over both the bureaucracy and society.

The chancellery’s First Section prepared documents for the emperor’s

reviewand supervised the bureaucracy’s personnel. TheSecond Section, under

the administration of Speranskii, worked on the codiﬁcation of the empire’s

laws. Between 1828 and 1830 Russia’s laws, broadly deﬁned and with some

exceptions, were published. In 1832 a law code was published, which replaced

the Law Code of 1649. At long last the government had written relatively coher-

ent rules. The Fifth Section, established in 1836, studied the living conditions

of state peasants and pursued reforms designed to improve them. Its research

became a basis for the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 during the reign of

Alexander II.

The Third Section became most well-known because of its police and super-

visory functions that were equivalent to an internal intelligence service. It was

a relatively effective state organ for the collection and analysis of information

and for the implementation of the emperor’s will. Five subsections handled

wide-ranging duties, which included surveillance of society and rooting out of

corruption in the state apparatus, censorship, investigation of political crimes

and management of relations between landowner and peasant.

The autocracy’s reliance on the chancellery lessened greatly with the start of

Alexander II’s reign. The problem of co-ordination of the subordinate organs

became more acute with the continued growth in the size, tasks and com-

plexity of the ministries, and once the new emperor decided to pursue the

emancipation of the serfs and other reforms. The existing avenues for govern-

ing and co-ordination open to Alexander could not provide the mechanism

needed for ministerial unity and co-ordination. The State Council was too

large and unwieldy a body while the Committee of Ministers, itself also a

large body, was bogged down in sorting out administrative detail. In 1857

Alexander founded the Council of Ministers which was to be the supreme

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organ capable of preparing and implementing reforms free of bureaucratic

inertia, ensuring co-ordination of ministers and policy-making and thereby

increasing the power of the emperor, under whose direct control the body

existed.

No provisions were made for the post of a co-ordinating ﬁgure such as a

ﬁrst minister or chairman. That vital function the emperor himself was to ﬁll.

It was expected that the monarch would frequently himself chair the council’s

meetings. The purpose of this was twofold. Firstly, the emperor along with his

ministers could consider legislation put forward by individual ministers before

its submission to the State Council. Thiswould create the conditions for greater

policy co-ordination and coherence. Secondly, by obtaining collective council

support for a measure, Alexander hoped to create ministerial unity behind

policy decisions.

However, Alexander was not prepared to give up the great personal control

afforded by the individual ministerial reports to him in private or to accept a

ﬁrst minister or chairman of the council. The ministers for their part under-

stood that a guarantee of policy success was not obtained by discussion with

colleagues in the Council of Ministers, but rather by going after the emperor’s

ear. This was the crux of the issue. Neither autocrat nor ministers wished in

reality to see the full institutionalisation of the supreme organs which they

correctly understood would lead to some limitation of their freedom of action.

Consequently the Council of Ministers atrophied.

The Council of Ministers could not become the co-ordinating point of

governmental and ministerial activity...Theunequalstatus of its members

and the presence of the tsar exercising absolute power prevented this. This

situation prevented the emergence of a collegiate organ and transformed it

into a personal council of the tsar where collective discussion of questions was

used to discover the position of the tsar himself. If we take into account that

in practice the ministers continued to deliver reports to the tsar individually

and privately, which should have been abandoned, it is easy to come to the

conclusion that the last attempt before the Revolution of 1905–1906 to create in

Russia a supreme collegiate organ failed and the central parts of governmental

administration in the country remained disconnected.

By the 1870s a dangerous political situation faced Alexander. Radicals

stepped up their action against the monarchy, even attempting to assassinate

the emperor himself. At the same time the government was losing moderate

13 S. V. Makarov, SovetMinistrov Rossisskoi Imperii 1857–1917 (St Petersburg: Izd. SPbU, 2000),

p. 41.

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public opinion due to the slowing pace of reform. Alexander understood that

decisive action which required a united and co-ordinated government was

needed to deal with the threat posed by the radicals and regain a degree of

public support. In February 1880 Alexander made Count Loris-Melikov chief

of the newly established Supreme Administrative Commission, a virtual dicta-

tor charged with co-ordination of government policies. Loris-Melikov quickly

realised that full support of the emperor did not automatically give him the

authority and real power to make the bureaucratic machine and its highest

servants responsive to his wishes. Less than a month later he requested and

received the portfolio of the Third Section. By the summer of 1880 this author-

ity rooted in a bureaucratic entity was clearly not enough. Loris-Melikov

disbanded the Supreme Commission and assumed stewardship of the most

powerful bureaucratic institution, the Ministry of Internal Affairs. From this

base, Loris-Melikov, with the open and full support of Alexander II, conducted

a ministerial reshufﬂe to ensure all members of the Council of Ministers could

be counted on for strong support.

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth century favourites had indeed

ruled for and in the name of the monarch, but they did not have a political

base in a particular bureaucratic institution, such as a ministry. By the second

half of the nineteenth century the subordinate organs had become so large

and unwieldy that when co-ordination of action and policy-making became

necessary, the co-ordinating ﬁgure needed to have a base in a subordinate

organ which provided real power. Alexander II had accidentally found a rel-

atively effective way for establishing order among the subordinate organs.

Alexander III and Nicholas II adopted this modus operandi, commonly alter-

nating between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Finance

as the focal point of co-ordination of domestic policy. There was an addi-

tional beneﬁt to this approach. It did not raise sensitivities over threats to

the emperor’s authority. A ﬁrst minister or chairman of a ministerial council

could prove a rival to the supreme monarchical power given his mediating

role between the monarch and the ministers. The use of one ‘strong’ minister

was one response to the recurring problem of co-ordination of the subor-

dinate organs, policy direction and the preservation of the personal power

of the autocracy. However, the unofﬁcial status of a ‘strong minister’ com-

bined with the absence of a ﬁrst minister or chairman created conditions in

which if the emperor did not play his designated co-ordinating role, supreme

and then subordinate organs lost direction. It also meant that overall gov-

ernment policy could be excessively inﬂuenced by the perceptions of one

ministry.

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