A further indication of the potential conflict in state-inspired local government can be seen in the relations between local and central officials. This was a dilemma from the start as Peter I attempted to reduce the influence of powerful voevody (military commanders) in the provinces by introducing governors in 1708. Governors always trod a difficult line, responsible for the conduct of local affairs whilst at the same time they were representatives of both the tsar and the central government. The sheer burden of work imposed by the centre - it has been estimated that governors had to sign over 100,000 papers per year by the 1840s7 - meant that there were practical impediments to devoting time to local affairs. Marshals of the nobility, elected by their fellow nobles, also faced the problem of representing the interests of the provincial nobles whilst being weighed down with bureaucratic functions imposed by the governor and the state.8 The provincial police force suffered from the same divided
Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 177-239. The rise of zemstvo radicalism is described in S. Galai, The Liberation Movement in Russia 1900-1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 7-35.
6 T. E. Porter, The Zemstvo and the Emergence of Civil Society in Late Imperial Russia 1864-1917 (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1991); these activities are described by a contemporary in T. J. Polner, Russian Local Government during the War and the Union of Zemstvos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930).
7 B.N. Mironov, 'Local Government in Russia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Provincial Government and Estate Self-Government', JfGO 42 (1994): 165.
8 G. Hamburg, 'Portrait of an Elite: Russian Marshals of the Nobility 1861-1971', SR 40, 4 (1981): 585-602.
loyalties. A rural police officer (called the zemskii komissar in 1719 and the zem- skii ispravnik after 1775) was elected from the nobility but was subordinated to the local regiment under Peter and then to the governor under Catherine, and was ultimately responsible to the central government. An urban police force was set up in 1782 whose responsibility extended beyond dealing with petty crimes to the preservation of the wellbeing and morals of the urban population (amongst other things the police had to ensure that the sexes were segregated in the bathhouses). But in 1802 the police force was subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (although land captains, or zemskie nachal'niki, remained responsible to the governor) and their relationship with local government thereby weakened. The establishment of the Third Department in 1826 in the reign of Nicholas I, made responsible for political security, added another layer of a secret police force which was entirely removed from local control.
On the other hand, the ability of the state to interfere in local administration was always curbed by two factors - the problem of communications in the vast empire, and poverty. Even in the middle of the nineteenth century it took forty-four days for a letter from Orenburg province to reach St Petersburg.[22] The situation improved only in the 1860s with the introduction of the telegraph. The poignancy and comic effect of Gogol's Government Inspector (Revizor, written in the 1830s) is based on the fact that inspectors so rarely visited the provinces in person so allowing local officials to act as they wished. Furthermore, the lawlessness of the Russian countryside - whether it be through bands of deserters or brigands or the spontaneous activities of individuals - militated against orderly government of any kind. Poverty meant that the state lacked the funds to staff the provinces in full or to offer high enough salaries to make elective posts attractive. The result was that Russia was seriously under-manned at all levels (with the possible exception of the peasant commune before 1861 which is outside the scope of this chapter). In 1763 Russia employed 16,500 officials in central and local government, while Prussia, with less than 1 per cent of Russia's land area employed some 14,000 civil servants.[23] It has been estimated that in 1796 there were only 6 administrators per 10,000 inhabitants; by 1857 this had only increased to 17 administrators per 10,000 inhabitants.[24] One estimate in 1897 was that there were just over 100,000 officials with some police responsibility at all levels in Russia.[25] Despite the amount of legislation devoted to local administration the conclusion has to be that Russia was under- rather than over-governed throughout the imperial period.[26]
The operation of local administration
The problems outlined above made smooth and complete implementation of government legislation impossible to achieve. Local administration was further weakened by the exclusion of large sections of the population from its control. Before the reforms of the 1860s, many of the matters relating to the everyday concerns of peasants - state peasants and serfs - were dealt with by peasants themselves through the commune. The commune not only distributed state obligations such as taxation and the recruit levy but also acted as a peasant court of first instance, using customary law and 'peasant justice' for civil matters and minor criminal offences. The Statute of Administration of 1775 established a structure of courts for state peasants, but serfs only participated in the state legal system when they were accused of major criminal offences or when they were litigants in cases involving other social estates (which could happen in disputes in town courts involving so-called 'trading peasants'). After emancipation and the reforms of 1864, exclusively peasant institutions were retained, as in the case of the commune, or created, in the case of volost' peasant courts where customary law continued to be applied, so that peasants were deliberately treated differently from other members of society, separately and outside the reformed state court structure.[27] This suggested that the reforms of 1864, like those of 1775, were primarily urban, and were of relevance to towns but not to the countryside, where, of course, the majority of the population lived. Industrial workers before the 1860s in the large privately owned enterprises mainly comprised assigned, orpossessional, serfs who were also outside the jurisdiction oflocal administration. The army, the clergy and several national and religious groups were also governed by a separate jurisdiction (although conflicts within towns between the Church and urban institutions, which was common in the seventeenth century, declined in the eighteenth century, particularly after the secularisation of Church land in 1764). These anomalies and the continuation of 'legal separateness' point to a fundamental problem in local administration, namely whether administration should be centred on soslovie, or social 'estate', reflecting corporate interests (such as urban institutions of self-government and noble assemblies), or whether administration should, or could be, 'all-class' or 'all-estate' (which was partly the case with some of the 1775 institutions, which excluded serfs but not state peasants, and fully the case with the zemstvos). An analysis of the functioning of both types of institution illustrates some of the dilemmas facing local administration during the imperial period.
22
S. F. Starr,
23
R. E. Jones,
25
J. W Daly,
26
Velychenko has recently challenged the view that Russia was 'undergoverned' by arguing that valid comparisons should be made between the levels of staffing in Russia with European colonies rather than with West European states, but his argument, although stimulating, cannot disguise the serious undermanningofinstitutions and of police forces in European Russia or in towns in the empire which can legitimately be compared with towns elsewhere in Europe: S. Velychenko, 'The Size of the Imperial Russian Bureaucracy and Army in Comparative Perspective',
27
S. F. Frank,