The zemstvos suffered from the same ambiguities in legislation as Petrine or Catherinian corporate institutions, which inhibited their opportunities to function effectively in the provinces. Some ofthis was due to ambiguous wording (such as 'participation' or 'co-operation' in certain activities) in some parts of 1864 statute.[42] More seriously, the areas of competence of the zemstvos potentially brought them into conflict with the governor, local officials, police and/orthe central bureaucracy. Zemstvos (in the statutes of 1864 and 1890) had to address local needs (economic, administrative, educational, humanitarian) whilst implementing the demands of the local civil and military administration. It has already been noted that the main conflict of interest arose over the extent of the zemstvo rights to raise taxes for local needs as well as fulfilling state fiscal obligations - taxes, of course, which were largely paid by peasants and townspeople rather than by the nobles who dominated the zemstvo boards. Nevertheless, the zemstvos did make some advances in the provision of healthcare and primary education, which has been described as 'the area of greatest zemstvo achievement'[43] (by the turn of the century the zemstvo was supporting almost 20,000 elementary schools,[44] a number which had risen to over 40,000 by 1914),[45] and played some role in stimulating agricultural modernisation.[46] Zemstvos took over welfare functions which had previously been performed by the state through the boards of public welfare and, in the case of education, by the Church.
After 1890 the governor's powers to blockzemstvo enactments and to supervise its operations were clarified and increased, but the zemstvos continued to provide and extend local services. But the conservative gentry reaction after the 1905 Revolution made the zemstvos far less receptive to reform; in their last decade zemstvos hindered the implementation of the Stolypin land reforms and blocked attempts to reform local administration, including the establishment of a zemstvo at the lowest, volost' level which was intended to make the peasants truly 'full members of Russian society'.[47] At the same time, the increase in state funding for primary schools at the expense of the zemstvos also meant an increase in state control over the operation of those schools even as their numbers rose. On the eve of war, the zemstvos had retreated from their 'all-estate' character and had become forums to reflect the views of the conservative provincial nobility.
A local bureaucracy?
Local administration suffered from the inability of the state to recruit men of quality. Local administration was never as prestigious, or as well rewarded, as service in St Petersburg or Moscow, and the civil service was never as highly regarded as military service. Young, provincial noble boys often entered the civil service only if they lacked the social connections or the physical ability to join a regiment. In the eighteenth century senior officials were frequently accused of corruption or ignorance. This was partly due to the lack of effective control exercised by the centre over distant provinces. It was also due to the paucity of institutions of higher education, and in particular to the slow development of legal training in Russia (the first Russian professor of law was S. A. Desnitskii, appointed in 1773 to Moscow University, who trained at Glasgow University),[48] to the poor salaries and to the unattractiveness of life in unsophisticated provincial backwaters. A high proportion of senior elective noble posts in the institutions set up in 1775 were occupied by nobles who had served in the army and had no civil training (in 1788 some 85 per cent of the presidents of the highest provincial courts were appointed directly from the army).[49] At the lower level, the clerical staff, who were mostly themselves the sons of clerks or sons of the clergy ('culled' or lured by the state from clerical seminaries), shifted vast amounts of paperwork around but were badly paid, badly educated and badly treated by their superiors. Police officers were underpaid, poorly trained and not respected. Bribery was endemic in Russian courts, and scarcely regarded as corrupt, at least at the lower levels.[50]
Although the corruption, greed and ignorance of local officials remained a theme in Russian literature in the nineteenth century, there is some evidence to suggest that a gradual professionalisation of the local bureaucracy was taking place during the century. Even in the late eighteenth century there were a small number of enlightened governors and senior provincial administrators who took their duties seriously and who developed a sense of what we might call 'a legal consciousness'.[51] Educational standards of senior officials rose after the introduction of formal examinations in 1809, and the reform of clerical schools and increase in numbers of state schools (at least in towns) led to a gradual increase ofstandards amongst junior staff(although salaries remained pitifully low). The number of direct transfers from the military to seniorposts in the civil service declined in the first half of the nineteenth century. The proportion of nobles in the bureaucracy - local and central - fell as the century progressed. After the municipal statute of 1870 the levels of education amongst mayors and senior urban representatives rose. Land captains, despite the criticisms levelled at them at the time by peasants and St Petersburg officials alike, had respectable levels of education (some 30 per cent had higher education).[52] The most important change affected governors, who by the early twentieth century frequently had considerable experience of local government, either as marshals of the nobility or as vice-governors. They had become, as the historian Robbins states, 'experts' and 'specialists' who had a profound knowledge of local affairs (some 80 per cent of governors in 1913 had served in another capacity in the provinces).[53] The consequence of this, however, was that governors became less willing to implement government policy unquestioningly; after 1905 many governors blocked further attempts at local reform in order to preserve what they regarded as local interests.[54]
43
J. Brooks, 'The Zemstvo and the Education of the People', in Emmons and Vucinich,
44
N. B. Weissman,
46
Recent research on one province has supported this view: G. Weldhen, 'The Zemstvo, Agricultural Societies and Agricultural Innovation in Viatka Guberniia in the 1890s and 1900s', in V E. Musikhin (ed.),
47
This process is described by R. Manning in 'Zemstvo and Revolution: The Onset of Gentry Reaction, 1905-07' and R. D. MacNaughton and R. T. Manning, 'The Crisis of the Third ofJune System and Political Trends in the Zemstvos, 1907-14', in L. H. Haimson,
48
See A. H. Brown, 'S. E. Desnitsky, Adam Smith and the Nakaz of Catherine II',
49
R. D. Givens, 'Eighteenth-Century Nobiliary Career Patterns and Provincial Government', in W. M. Pintner and D. K. Rowney (eds.),
50
J. M. Hartley 'Bribery and Justice in the Provinces in the Reign of Catherine II', in S. Lovell, A. Ledeneva and A. Rogachevskii (eds.),
51
See J. Keep, 'Light and Shade in the History of the Russian Administration',
52
D. A.J. Macey, 'The Land Captains: A Note on the Social Composition 1889-1913',
53
R. G. Robbins, Jr,
54
R. G. Robbins, 'Choosing the Russian Governors: The Professionalisation of the Gubernatorial Corps',