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 followed 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.[7]
Nicholas I showed little trust for the supreme and subordinate organs established by Alexander. He preferred to govern the empire through ad hoc committees dedicated to specific issues and through His Majesty's Own Personal Chancellery which Paul I had founded in 1796. By placing the chancellery above the supreme and subordinate organs and under his direct control, Nicholas further 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 promotion 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 review and supervised the bureaucracy's personnel. The Second 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 coherent 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 supervisory 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 complexity of the ministries, and once the new emperor decided to pursue the emancipation of the serfs and other reforms. The existing avenues for governing 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 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. This would 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 understood 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 . . . The unequal status 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.[8]
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 public opinion due to the slowing pace ofreform. 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 ofthe newly established Supreme Administrative Commission, a virtual dictator 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 authority 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 ofAlexander II, conducted a ministerial reshuffle to ensure all members of the Council of Ministers could be counted on for strong support.
8
S. V Makarov