Modernisation from above
Inseparable from this discussion is the regime's institutional response to the challenges posed by modernisation from above. Unsurprisingly the achievement and maintenance of great power status, an essential plank in Romanov legitimacy, became a driving force behind the evolution of subordinate and supreme governing organs under Peter the Great and subsequently. Defeat in the Crimean War put on top of the agenda not only the necessity for major socioeconomic reform on a scale not seen since the time of Peter, such as the abolition of serfdom, inculcation of legal principles and industrialisation, but also the enlargement and improvement of the bureaucracy, whose responsibility now was transformation of a society regarded as backward in relation to the advanced powers of Europe.
The Russian bureaucracy undertook one of the first programmes of modernisation from above, having been forced to play many roles which belonged to private groups in the economically advanced countries of Europe. The regime collapsed in 1917, but to deny the positive contributions ofthe bureaucratic system, despite all its faults, is difficult. Even if we just focus on the period from the Great Reforms to the Revolution the list of achievements is impressive: emancipation of the serfs, establishment of an independent judiciary system and local government (zemstvos), industrialisation, construction of a vast railway network, the beginnings of a constitutional form of government, Stolypin's land reforms, attempts at a genuine social welfare system and expansion of mass education. All of these required a fairly competent bureaucratic infrastructure as well as expertise and professionalism.[19] But the subordinate organs needed direction from above. In the absence of effective supreme organs, many times the ministries handled 'personal and particular problems, to the obvious detriment of larger, more important issues and unforeseen circumstances'.[20] In the end, Russia's subordinate organs in St Petersburg to a significant extent operated well, while the more serious problems of governing existed elsewhere in the supreme organs and in the modus operandi of the emperors and most especially of Nicholas II.
Provincial and local government
JANET M. HARTLEY
Introduction
A study of local government raises several important questions about the nature of the imperial Russian state, the level of development of provincial Russian society and the relationship between government and society in Russia. To what extent did the government allow or wish to encourage a genuine decentralisation or devolution of power to the provinces? Could local government institutions - either corporate institutions or 'all-class' institutions - flourish given both the pressures from the centre and the poor economic and cultural levels of rural Russia which inhibited the growth of an educated and politically conscious provincial society? To what extent can we even speak of a structure of local government when a significant proportion ofthe population - the peasants - were only rarely touched by it, at least until the Emancipation of 1861 and to some extent even thereafter? The status of local government - either as separate from the central bureaucracy or as an integral part of the government structure - was a major debate in Russia in the nineteenth century. At the root of these questions is the fundamental issue of the relationship between local government and the modernisation of the Russian state. On the one hand, local government was potentially a tool to stimulate corporate identity, urban self-confidence and economic and cultural progress across all sectors of society, including the peasantry after 1861. On the other hand, problems in local government could be interpreted as symbolic of the failure, or the unwillingness, of the tsarist regime to adapt to change and to establish an effective relationship between state and society If the latter has some validity, then we have to ask in addition whether local government contributed to the downfall of the regime which created it.
Local government was a matter which concerned all the tsars but there were periods of particularly intensive and significant legislative activity, namely: (i) the reign of Peter I (1682-1725) when urban administration was reformed (in 1699 and more notably in 1721 when urban magistracies were established) and when, in 1718, the country was re-divided into gubernii (provinces), which were in turn subdivided into provintsii and uezdy (districts); (ii) the reign of Catherine II (1762-96) when three major laws were promulgated-the Statute of Provincial Administration of 1775 and the Charters to the Nobles and the Towns in 1785; (iii) the era of reforms in the decade which followed the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, which saw the introduction of the zemstvos (local elected assemblies) and the re-structuring of the legal system and reform of urban administration; (iv) the 1890s when many of the reforms of the 1860s were modified or curtailed. In addition, legislation which ostensibly only concerned central government - in particular the establishment of the Senate in 1711, the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1802 and then the introduction of national representation in the State Duma (Parliament) in 1905 - had a significant impact on the functions of local institutions and their relationship with the centre. This chapter is concerned with Russian local administration but it should be noted that different structures, different traditions and even different law codes applied in many of the non-Russian parts of the empire until well into the nineteenth century and sometimes until 1917. These areas include the Baltic provinces, the lands of former Poland-Lithuania, the Ukraine, the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Centre and the provinces
Local government was an issue which spawned extensive, and lengthy, legislation over the whole imperial period (the 1775 Statute of Provincial Administration, for example, comprised 491 articles; the two statutes of 1864 and 1890 on the zemstvos comprised 120 and 138 articles respectively). The provenance and nature of this legislation reflect something of the relationship between the centre and the provinces. For the most part in the first two hundred years of this study, legislation was not stimulated by demands for its introduction from nobles or townspeople or by local officials. This does not mean, however, that these groups had no views on the matter. When they were asked for opinions - as they were in the Legislative Commission of 1767, by N. A. Miliutin in the 1840s in the context of municipal reform of St Petersburg, and in the formulation of what became the zemstvo legislation in the late 1850s and early 1860s - they were prepared to give them and to highlight the inadequacies of current local administration at the same time. But the timing and content of local government legislation was primarily determined by the tsars and their advisers and the institutional structures created were often based on Western models (which could be Swedish, Baltic, Prussian, French or English) rather than being drawn from analyses of local needs or the experiences of the provinces.
The 'dynamic, interventionist and coercive state', as Marc Raeff characterised Petrine Russia,1 had always assumed that it had the power and the obligation to govern all aspects of the lives of its citizens. This belief was not, of course, unique to the Russian government, either in the eighteenth century or afterwards, but possibly featured most strongly in the Russian case because of the lack of balancing factors such as bodies representing estate interests, well- developed urban institutions or a powerful and independent Church hierarchy which existed elsewhere in Europe. A study of the legislation concerning local government, however, is not only central to the understanding of the intentions of central government but also exposes the weakness of the central government and the essential contradictions in tsarist policy. The government wanted to stimulate provincial and urban institutions of self-government and, by extension, stimulate the development of a provincial society, but it needed to control these institutions and ensure above all that they fulfilled state obligations as a greater priority than satisfying local needs. The potential for conflict between provinces and the centre was always there but became more acute after the establishment of the zemstvos in the 1860s. The government also needed the participation of elected, and poorly paid, officials from members of provincial noble and urban society (and also state peasants after 1775 and former serfs after 1864) to staff local institutions (in particular, the lower levels of courts) because it lacked the trained manpower and the financial resources to fill these posts with a professional bureaucracy appointed from the centre. At the same time it feared the independence of these officials and attempted to co-opt them to carry out government policies and subordinated them to appointed representatives of the government and to ministries in the capital.
19
On senior late-imperial officials, see D. Lieven,
20
A. Verner,