In January 1826 he submitted a plan to Nicholas for organizing a department of political police. When Nicholas then created the third section of the imperial chancellery, Benckendorff was placed in charge of both the gendarmerie and the third section, with responsibility for the work of regular and secret police, posts he held until his death.
Loris-Melikov, Mikhail Tariyelovich, Graf
▪ Russian statesman
(Count)
born Jan. 1, 1826, [Dec. 20, 1825, old style], Tiflis, Russia
died Dec. 24 [Dec. 12, O.S.], 1888, Nice, Fr.
military officer and statesman who, as minister of the interior at the end of the reign of the emperor Alexander II (ruled 1855–81), formulated reforms designed to liberalize the Russian autocracy.
Loris-Melikov was the son of an Armenian merchant. He attended the Lazarev School of Oriental Languages and the Guards' Cadet Institute in St. Petersburg before he joined a hussar regiment in 1843. Assigned to the Caucasus in 1847, he served as governor of the Terek region (1863–75) and, while commanding an army corps in Turkey during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, scored notable military victories. For his heroism, he was made a count.
After serving briefly as governor-general of the plague-ridden lower Volga region (1879), Loris-Melikov was transferred to the provinces of central Russia, where he recommended to the emperor a modest scheme of administrative and economic reforms, aimed at alleviating the causes of social discontent and, thereby, combating revolutionary terrorism. Impressed by his suggestions, Alexander appointed him chairman of a special commission that was given authority to use the entire government apparatus to suppress the revolutionary movement and also to prepare a reform program for the country. Six months later Alexander abolished the commission and named Loris-Melikov the new minister of the interior (November 1880).
In this position Loris-Melikov devised a program of moderate reforms that included provisions for locally elected representatives to give the government advice on certain current problems. Although the project was approved in principle by Alexander, the emperor was assassinated (March 13 [March 1, O.S.], 1881) before it was formally enacted. When his successor, Alexander III, rejected the reform program and firmly committed himself to the preservation of the autocracy, Loris-Melikov resigned (May 19 [May 7], 1881), retiring to Nice.
Speransky, Mikhail Mikhaylovich, Graf
▪ Russian statesman
Introduction
(Count)
born Jan. 12 [Jan. 1, old style], 1772, Cherkutino, Russia
died Feb. 23 [Feb. 11, O.S.], 1839, St. Petersburg
Russian statesman prominent during the Napoleonic period, administrative secretary and assistant to Emperor Alexander I. He later compiled the first complete collection of Russian law, Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire, 45 vol. (1830), leading to his supervision of the Digest of the Laws, 15 vol. (1832–39).
Early life.
Mikhail, or Misha, Mikhaylovich was the son of the village priest of Cherkutino in central Russia. He was sent at the age of 12 to the ecclesiastical seminary in Vladimir, the provincial capital. His lack of a surname (Mikhaylovich indicating simply “son of Mikhail”) was overcome by an imaginative uncle, who dubbed him Speransky, a Russified form of the Latin word for hope. The boy soon distinguished himself by his ability to analyze problems and to express his thoughts with grace and clarity, but he already displayed an aloofness that emphasized his consciousness of his intellectual superiority yet cloaked his very real desire to feel the affection of those whom he respected, a quality that was to be a handicap in his later official career.
As a priest's son, he was sent at government expense to the Main Seminary newly founded in St. Petersburg. On completion of the course, he should have returned to his native diocese as a teacher. But a practice sermon so pleased the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg that the Synod granted permission to retain Speransky as a teacher of mathematics in the Main Seminary. Speransky resisted the urging of the Metropolitan that he take monastic vows, a step that would have opened to him the possibility of rising to the highest offices in the church. Despite his refusal, he was, in 1795, appointed instructor of philosophy and prefect of the seminary.
Secretary to Prince Kurakin.
At this point, Speransky's future prospects were radically changed. Prince A.B. Kurakin took him into his household as secretary. Here he deepened his knowledge of the thought of the French Enlightenment and was introduced to the Idealist philosophy of Immanuel Kant. On the accession of Emperor Paul I (1796), Kurakin was appointed procurator general of the Senate, a post as close as possible in the Russian system of that time to that of prime minister. He was, thus, powerful enough to secure Speransky's release from his priestly status, which enabled him to enter government service. Speransky was pushed rapidly upward through the lower bureaucratic grades; by the end of 1798, still not 27 years old, he had already risen high enough in the Table of Ranks to be entitled to enjoy, on a hereditary basis, all the privileges of “the most ancient nobility.”
In the same year, Speransky met an English girl whose widowed mother had come to Russia as a governess. He became so enamored of her that, although she knew no Russian and he understood no English, a courtship in fractured French led to their marriage. In the following year a daughter was born, but the mother, suffering from tuberculosis, died a few months later. Speransky, completely shattered, disappeared for a time. He never remarried but immersed himself wholly in his work. When Kurakin suddenly fell from favour, Speransky's tact, his evident ability, and his industry enabled him to continue his career.
Secretary to the Emperor.
Under Paul's successor, Alexander I, he was assigned to ever more responsible positions, at first in the new Ministry of the Interior, where he gained invaluable experience in drafting legislation and was the prime mover in founding Severnaya pochta or Novaya Sankt-Petersburgskaya gazeta, Russia's first official newspaper. In 1807 he became intimately associated with the Emperor himself, as his administrative secretary and assistant. In 1808 he accompanied Alexander to his meeting with Napoleon, who described him as “the only clear head in Russia.” Though he proved not yet able to cope successfully with the task of codifying the country's laws, he reorganized the seminaries and secured the establishment of the first Russian lycée (state secondary school).
In 1809 he laid the basis for his own downfall by two measures that outraged the bureaucratic nobility: one required that holders of court titles perform actual service to the state; the other required that all officials must pass examinations in order to be promoted at various stages of their careers. The angry nobles began to refer contemptuously to him as the popovich (“priest's son”). It was in this year, also, that Speransky proposed his new “constitution” (the Plan of 1809). Well aware that Alexander wanted no tampering with the essence of the autocracy or with its basis in serfdom, Speransky prepared complicated plans for dividing the population into three classes with varying degrees of political and civil rights and for creation of elective assemblies, the dumas, and an appointive State Council. The latter was set up on Jan. 1, 1810, but the dumas, innocuous though they would have been, remained on paper.