Thanks to the archival researches of P.A.Zaionchkovskii, we are now reasonably well informed about the deliberations of the government during this critical period.16 The arguments of the opponents of political reform boiled themselves down to the following principal contentions:
1. The introduction of public representatives into government, whether in the centre or the provinces, whether in a legislative or merely a consultative capacity, would establish conflicting lines of responsibility and disorganize the administration. In fact, to improve administrative efficiency, zemstva should be abolished.
2. Because of its geographic and social characteristics, Russia requires a system of administration subject to the least possible restraints and controls. Russian functionaries should enjoy wide discretionary powers, and police 'justice' should be separated from ordinary courts. This latter point was expressed by the archetypal conservative bureaucrat, the Minister of the Interior from 1882 to 1889, Dmitry A. Tolstoy:
The sparse population of Russia, distributed over an immense territory, the unavoidable remoteness from courts which results from this, the low economic level of the people and the patriarchal customs of our agrarian
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class, all create conditions demanding the establishment of authority which in its activities is not restrained by excessive formalism, an authority able promptly to restore order and as quickly as possible to correct violations of the population's rights and interests.17
3. Political reforms granted under duress will be interpreted as a sign of weakness and contribute to the further deterioration of state authori ty. This argument was used even by a relatively liberal public servant like Loris-Melikov. Arguing against proposals to introduce into Russia representative institutions, he wrote:
I am deeply convinced that any reforms in the sense of these projects not only are not useful at present but, being utterly untimely, would cause harm... The measure itself would appear as having been forced upon the government by circumstances, and would be so interpreted in Russia and abroad.18
4. The introduction of representative institutions in any form, even the most conservative, would mark the first step towards a constitutional regime; once taken, the others would inevitably have to follow.
5. Foreign experience with representative institutions indicates that they are not conducive to stability; if anything, parliaments interfere with efficient administration. This argument was particularly attractive to the heir-apparent.
To clinch the argument, opponents of political concessions greatly exaggerated the extent of sedition in the country, frightening the Emperor with the spectre of widespread conspiracy and unrest which bore little relation to the facts. As will be shown, the actual number of people involved in seditious activities was ludicrously smalclass="underline" even with their broad discretionary powers, the gendarmes could not put their hands on masses of subversives. But appeals to this sense of fear helped dissuade Alexander 11 from following the advice of his more liberal advisers.
The real rulers of Russia were... Chief of Gendarmes Shuvalov and the St Petersburg Chief of Police Trepov. Alexander n carried out their will, was their instrument. They ruled by fear. Trepov had so scared Alexander with the spectre of revolution just about to break out in St. Petersburg that should the all-powerful police chief be a few minutes late in the palace with his daily report, the Emperor would make enquiry whether all was calm in the capital.19
The closest Alexander came to making political concessions was in 1880-1 when he agreed to a proposal submitted by Loris-Melikov. In addition to far-reaching changes in provincial administration, Loris-Melikov suggested the convocation in St Petersburg of several elected committees to discuss policy questions touching on questions of provincial administration, peasant economy, food supply and national finances.
TOWARDS THE POLICE STATE
Upon the completion of their work, these specialized commissions were to constitute a general commission to advise the government. This proposal, often incorrectly called the 'Loris-Melikov constitution' (the term was coined by Alexander 111 to discredit it) was modest enough, yet its implications were weighty. Russia was entering on unchartered waters, and no one could predict where the journey would lead. Even Alexander, while approving the proposal, muttered about Russian 'Estates General'. He was to have signed the decree calling for the convocation of Loris-Melikov's committees on 1 March 1881, but on that day he was killed by a terrorist bomb. The murder of Alexander 11 saved the bureaucracy from that which it had dreaded the most: the participation of society in political decisionmaking. After momentary hesitation, Alexander in decided that order would be best restored not by further concessions but by more stringent measures of repression. Reform projects ceased; N.P.Ignatev, the new Minister of the Interior, who had the bad judgement to propose to Alexander in the convocation of estates on the model of Muscovite Land Assemblies was promptly dismissed from his post. The patrimonial principle, held in disfavour since the middle of the eighteenth century, surfaced once again. The 'state', as henceforth understood, meant the tsar and his officialdom; internal politics meant protecting both from the encroachments of society. A quick succession of emergency measures completed the subjection of society to the arbitrary power of the bureaucracy and police.
On 14 August 1881, Alexander in signed into law the most important piece of legislation in the history of imperial Russia between the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the October Manifesto of 1905, and more durable than either. This document, which codified and systematized the repressive legislation issued in the preceding years, has been the real constitution under which - brief interludes apart - Russia has been ruled ever since. In a manner characteristic of Russian legislative practices, in the official Collection of Statutes and Ordinances this momentous piece of legislation is casually sandwiched between a directive approving minor alterations in the charter of the Russian Fire Insurance Company and one concerning the administration of a technical institute in the provincial town of Cherepovtsy.20 Its full title reads 'Regulation concerning measures for the protection of the [established] system of government and of public tranquillity, and the placement of certain of the Empire's localities under a state of Reinforced Safeguard'. In its opening paragraphs, the decree asserted that ordinary laws had proved insufficient to preserve order in the empire so that it had become necessary to introduce certain 'extraordinary' procedures. In its operative
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