Liberal-conservative bureaucrats rejected such a system as hopelessly out of date. In their judgment, a country as complex and dynamic as modern Russia could not be governed by bureaucratic whim, in disregard of the law and without popular involvement. The liberal-conservative trend in the bureaucracy first emerged, in the 1860s, at the time of the Great Reforms. It was reinforced by the emancipation of serfs in 1861, which deprived the monarchy of the services of 100,000 serf-owning landlords who had previously performed on its behalf, free of charge, a variety of administrative functions in the countryside. At that time P. A. Valuev was of the opinion that
already now, in the conduct of administration, the Sovereign is Autocrat in name only; that is, autocracy manifests itself only in bursts, in flashes. But given the growing complexity of the administrative mechanism, the more important questions of government elude, and must of necessity elude, the Sovereign’s immediate attention.49
Which was to say that the sheer mass of administrative business required authority to be more widely distributed.
The liberal-conservatives conceded that the Tsar had to remain the exclusive source of laws, but they insisted that laws, once promulgated, were binding on all the officials included. This was the distinguishing quality of the Rechtsstaat. They also had a higher opinion of Russia’s capacity for self-government and wanted the educated part of the population to be brought into participation in a consultative capacity. They disliked the estate system as an anachronism, preferring that the country move toward common and egalitarian citizenship. They attached particular importance to the gradual elimination of the special status and isolation of the peasantry. The liberal-conservatives had their bastions in the Council of State (which framed laws), the Senate (the highest court of appeals), and the ministries of Justice and Finance.50
Historic developments favored the liberal bureaucracy. The rapid growth of the Russian economy in the second half of the nineteenth century alone raised doubts about the feasibility of running Russia in a patrimonial manner. It was very well for Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the main ideologue of patrimonial conservatism, to argue that in Russia “there cannot exist separate authorities [vlasti], independent of the central state authority [vlast’].”51 This principle may have been enforceable in a static, agrarian society. But in a capitalist economy such as developed in Russia in the late nineteenth century with the government’s active encouragement, every corporation, every business entrepreneur, every commercial bank made, on its own, decisions affecting the state and society: they acted as “independent authorities” even under the autocratic regime. The conservatives instinctively understood this and resisted economic development, but they fought a losing battle inasmuch as Russia’s international standing and fiscal stability had come increasingly to depend on the growth of industry, transport, and banking.
Perhaps the monarchy would have moved decisively in the direction favored by its more liberal servants were it not for the revolutionary movement. The wave of terror that struck Russia in 1879–81 and again after 1902 had no parallel in the world to that time or since. Each terrorist assault played into the hands of those advocating repression. In August 1881, Alexander III put in place a set of emergency rules that made it possible for the officials in turbulent areas to impose martial law and govern as they would enemy territory. These laws, which remained on the statute books until the demise of the monarchy, foreshadowed some of the salient features of the modern police state.52 They greatly enhanced the arbitrary power of the right-wing bureaucrats, offsetting the gains of the liberals from economic and educational progress.
The contrary pulls to which the late Imperial Government was subjected can be illustrated in the example of legal institutions. In 1864, Alexander II gave Russia her first independent judiciary system, with juries and irremovable judges. It was a reform that the conservatives found especially galling because it created a formal enclave of decision-making independent of the monarch and his officials. Pobedonostsev accused the new courts of violating the principle of unity of authority: in Russia, irremovable judges were an “anomaly.”53 In terms of autocratic principles he was undeniably correct. The conservatives succeeded in having political offenses removed from the jurisdiction of civilian courts and transferred to administrative courts, but they could not undo the court reform because it had become too embedded in Russian life, and, in any event, they had no realistic alternative.
The squabbling between the two bureaucratic camps was typified by the rivalry between the ministries of the Interior and of Finance.
The Ministry of the Interior was an institution sui generis, virtually a state within a state, resembling less a branch of the executive than a self-contained system within the machinery of government.54 While the other ministries had clearly defined and therefore limited functions, Interior had the general function of administering the country. In 1802, when it came into existence, it had been responsible for promoting economic development and supervising transport and communications. Its sphere of competence was immensely broadened in the 1860s, partly as a result of serf emancipation, which deprived landlords of administrative authority, and partly in response to the revolutionary unrest. By 1900, the Minister of the Interior was something of a Chief Imperial Steward. The ambitions of the holders of the post knew no bounds. In 1881, in the wake of a campaign of terror that culminated in the assassination of Alexander II, the Minister of the Interior, N. P. Ignatev, proposed that in order to extirpate dissent not only in society but also in the government, which he believed was filled with subversives, his ministry be authorized to engage, in effect, in what one historian has described as “administrative-police supervision … of all other government agencies.”55 A proposal in the same spirit was made twenty years later by Minister of the Interior Viacheslav Plehve on behalf of the governors.56 Both proposals were rejected, but it is indicative of the authority of the ministry that they dared to make them. It was logical that after 1905, when the equivalent post of Prime Minister was created, its holder usually also held the portfolio of the Interior.
The Minister of the Interior headed the national administration by virtue of authority to appoint and supervise the country’s principal administrative officials, the governors. These tended to be selected from among the less educated and more conservative bureaucrats: in 1900, half of them had no higher education. Governors chaired provincial boards (gubemskie pravleniia) and a variety of committees, of which the most important were the bureaus (prisutstviia) charged with overseeing the industrial, military, and agricultural affairs of their province. They also had responsibility for the peasants: they appointed, from among trustworthy local landed gentry, land commandants (zemskie nachal’niki), who acted as wardens of the volost’ administration and enjoyed broad authority over the peasantry. The governors also supervised the zemstva. In case of unrest, they could request the Minister of the Interior to declare their province under either Reinforced or Extraordinary Safeguard, which resulted in the suspension of all civil rights and rule by decree. With the exception of the courts and agencies of fiscal control, the governors encountered few barriers to their will. Through them, the Minister of the Interior ran the Empire.*