In addition to these sentiments, there was a strong strain of Anglophilia in Petersburg society. Britain was seen as not just very powerful but also as the freest of the European states. Unlike other countries, Britain’s freedoms actually seemed to enhance its power, allowing the state to sustain a huge level of debt at very manageable cost. The wealth, entrenched rights and values of its aristocracy were seen as a key to both British freedom and British power, and were compared favourably with Napoleon’s bureaucratic despotism. If the Vorontsov and Stroganov families were Petersburg’s most prominent aristocratic Anglophiles, some of Alexander’s closest friends from his own generation also belonged in this camp.
In addition, Adam Smith was widely read and the British economy much admired by many of the key individuals who shaped Russian economic and financial policy. Nikolai Mordvinov, the elder statesman of Russian economic policy, was a great disciple of Smith and Ricardo for example. Dmitrii Gurev, the minister of finance, called the British system of public finance ‘one of the most extraordinary inventions of the human understanding’. All this admiration was by no means merely abstract. These men believed that Russia’s interests were closely aligned with Britain’s. Britain was the main market and the main carrier of Russian exports. In 1808–12 Mordvinov in particular was terrified that if Russia continued to adhere to Napoleon’s economic blockade of Britain these export markets would be lost for good. In his opinion mutually profitable trade relations with Britain were by no means incompatible with selective protection of fledgling Russian industries. Meanwhile not just these Anglophiles but almost all Russia’s senior diplomats in 1808–12 came to agree that Napoleon’s drive to dominate the continent was the main threat to Russian interests and that Britain was a natural ally in the face of this threat. If, unlike Petr Tolstoy, they did not bombard Petersburg with these opinions that was because they wished to keep their jobs and often sympathized with Alexander’s own view that it was in Russia’s interests to postpone the inevitable conflict with France for as long as possible.8
The papers of General Levin von Bennigsen, the commander-in-chief in 1807, go to the core of Russian geopolitical thinking at this time. Like most members of the ruling elite, Bennigsen supported peace in 1807 but disliked the French alliance. Equally common was his view that, although British naval power was sometimes used in ways that damaged Russian pride, French domination of continental Europe was much more of a threat to key Russian interests. In particular, it was in Napoleon’s power to re-establish a Polish state of 15 million people on Russia’s borders and this would be a huge threat to Russian security. Bennigsen also believed that if Napoleon was allowed to strangle Russia’s foreign trade then the economy would no longer be able to sustain Russia’s armed forces or the European culture of its elites. The country would revert to its pre-Petrine, semi-Asiatic condition.
In Bennigsen’s view, Britain’s global position was so strong that it would be immensely hard for Napoleon to break, even if all of continental Europe united behind this goal. A crucial factor in British global power was its hold on India, which Bennigsen considered unassailable. He argued that the British had created a European-style military system in India funded by local taxpayers. This army, ‘formed on the same principles as our European regiments, commanded by English officers, and excellently armed, manoeuvres with the precision of our grenadiers’. In the past Asiatic cavalry armies had invaded India over its north-west frontier and conquered the subcontinent but these had no chance against the Anglo-Indian infantry and artillery. Meanwhile no rival European army could reach the subcontinent because the British dominated the sea-routes and the logistical problems of getting a European-style army across Persia or Afghanistan were insurmountable. Having himself campaigned in northern Persia, Bennigsen spoke with authority on this point. The conclusion which Bennigsen drew from this analysis was that for Russia to ally with France against Britain was suicidal. In the first place French victory over Britain was flatly contrary to Russian interests. Secondly, Russian finances and the economy would disintegrate long before any economic war with Britain could be successful.9
The alliance with Napoleon always had many more potential enemies than friends in Petersburg. Nevertheless there were possible sources of support. Any sensible official concerned with the empire’s internal affairs knew that Russia faced many domestic problems with very inadequate resources to meet them. Hugely expensive foreign policies and wars were a disaster from this perspective. In 1808–12 the key figure in Russian internal affairs was Mikhail Speransky, whom Tolstoy – still very much the provincial aristocrat when he wrote the novel – caricatures unfairly in War and Peace. Speransky was an unlikely person to find in the top ranks of Russian government. The son of a penniless provincial priest, sheer ability had resulted in him being sent to Russia’s leading ecclesiastical academy in Petersburg. From there, his obvious career would have been as a bishop and a senior administrator in the Orthodox Church. He was plucked from this life by Aleksandr Kurakin’s brother, who made Speransky his private secretary and then transferred him to the state bureaucracy to help him in his official duties.
Speransky’s great intelligence, his skill as a draftsman of laws and memoranda, and his astonishing work ethic won him the admiration first of a range of top officials, and then of Alexander himself. Though there is no reason to doubt Alexander’s enthusiasm for Speransky, the emperor will also have realized that a chief adviser without connections in the Petersburg aristocracy posed no threat and could easily be thrown to the wolves in case of necessity. In 1808–12 Speransky was in reality the emperor’s main adviser on financial matters, the restructuring of central government, and the affairs of newly acquired Finland. In 1809–12, as Alexander began to run aspects of Russian diplomacy and espionage behind Rumiantsev’s back, he used Speransky as the conduit for secret reports designed for the monarch’s eyes alone. Alexander also discussed secretly with Speransky plans for the fundamental reform of Russian society and government, entailing both the emancipation of the serfs and the introduction of elected assemblies at central and regional level.
Any individual with this degree of imperial favour would have attracted enormous jealousy and criticism in Petersburg society. The fact that Speransky was a parvenu and lacked the time or the skill to forge useful connections made him all the more vulnerable. Rumours floated about concerning Speransky’s plans to emancipate the peasants. Some of his reforms, designed to improve administrative efficiency, damaged the interests of members of the aristocracy. Much of noble opinion saw Speransky as a ‘Jacobin’ and a worshipper of that heir of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte. There was little truth in this. Speransky admired some of Napoleon’s administrative and legal reforms but his plans for representative institutions were closer to English models than to Napoleon’s bureaucratic despotism. Moreover, though Speransky would have loved to be allowed to get on with domestic reform untroubled by external complications, he was under no illusions that Napoleon would leave Russia in peace to do this.10