Regular ministerial reports, written and oral, constituted the heart of the new system. Ministers met individually with 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 universities and lycees to train future high-level bureaucrats, increasingly seen as
7 J. Hartley, Alexander I (London: Longman, 1994); S.V Mironenko, Samoderzhavie i reformy: politicheskaiabor'bavRossii vnachale XIXv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1989).
the key to better government. Under Nicholas I and Alexander II (r. 1855-81) the bureaucratic machine grew immensely in size and became more professional, especially at the higher and middle ranks.[3] 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 emphasis 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 Emancipation of the Serfs and the Great Reforms under Alexander II. Consequently the bureaucracy's view of itself began to evolve. The bureaucrats of the seventeenth 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 institutional 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 ofpublic forums or parliamentary 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.[4]The best-known cleavage emerged between the two most powerful subordinate 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 respective ministries. The prime responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the maintenance of public order throughout 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 peasants 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 industrialisation of Russia, which its head Sergei Witte regarded as essential if Russia was to avoid becoming a second-rate power and provider of natural 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' conditions 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 following 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 strengthened 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 understood 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 organisations, each with its own purpose which strengthened the need for stable and efficient supreme co-ordinating organs.
Supreme organs (Verkhovnye organy)
From the establishment of the collegiate system to the 1917 February Revolution, 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, improvingtax collecting organs, rooting out corruption, and supervision ofthe 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 administrative 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 practice. 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.
3
See: W B. Lincoln,
4
H. W. Whelan,