Russia. A History

At first, Alexander merely put a close to the wildly fluctuating policies of his father, who had begun his reign as an enemy of France and ended it as France’s ally against England. Alexander recalled an expeditionary force his father had sent to conquer British territories in India and composed other differences with Great Britain so that the mutually beneficial trade between the two countries could resume. In 1803, when hostilities reignited between France and Great Britain, Alexander hoped to be able to act as a peacemaker and tried above all to restrain Napoleon’s expansionist policies. Relations between Russia and France took a sharp turn for the worse in 1804 when Napoleon seized the Duke of Enghien from a neighbouring neutral country and had him summarily executed for plotting the overthrow of the French government. Alexander’s protest at the execution was met with contempt from Napoleon. Soon after, Russia joined a new coalition against Napoleonic France, which led to war the following year and a major defeat of Austrian and Russian forces at Austerlitz. After further defeats in 1806, abandonment by his allies, and the opening of hostilities between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Alexander saw no option but withdrawal from the war largely on terms dictated by Napoleon in the summer of 1807 at Tilsit, a town on the Niemen river in Poland. The famous accords signed at Tilsit had the practical effect of dividing Europe between France and Russia and also committed Russia to adhere to the continental blockade through which France hoped to undermine British commerce and finances.

Mikhail Speranskii’s Reforms

Concern about the inadequacies of the Russian political order continued. Alexander seemed to see the problem as essentially one of personnel, a shortage of honest and effective administrators. Others, however, recognized the need as well for structural changes. One of these was Mikhail Speranskii, a priest’s son, who rose from humble origins to the pinnacle of Russian government. A brilliant seminary student and teacher, he became secretary to a highly placed aristocrat, served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs early in Alexander’s reign, and by 1808 had risen to the position of State Secretary, the leading official for domestic affairs. No less than Alexander, Speranskii lamented the deficiencies of Russian officials and convinced the tsar to introduce exams for promotion to senior government ranks, a step that did not endear him to the many noble officials who had gained their positions through patronage and without the necessary educational and technical qualifications. Speranskii also proposed legal and financial reforms and achieved some success in stabilizing the currency and increasing tax revenues. His financial measures included a temporary tax on the nobility, which, again, won him no friends among that important class.

The most sweeping changes proposed by Speranskii touched political and administrative organization and included a plan for the separation of powers patterned on Montesquieu’s ideas. He proposed to divide the Senate into separate administrative and judicial hierarchies and to create a third branch of government, the legislative, with an assembly elected on a narrow franchise. The entire system was to be capped by a cabinet headed by the emperor and called the State Council. Although Speranskii undoubtedly had won the emperor’s agreement to pursue such a project, Alexander ultimately refused to approve major changes and implemented only the plan for the State Council, which was established in 1810 together with a reorganization of government ministries. By this time, the clouds of war were again gathering as Napoleon prepared the invasion of Russia. Whether or not Alexander was inclined to additional government reforms, this was not the time to launch a political experiment that could have compromised lines of authority. Moreover, Speranskii was unpopular with the nobility because of his crack-down on incompetence and support of financial policies harmful to noble interests. The nobility supplied Russia’s military leadership and officer corps, and to solidify support for the regime in the face of the impending challenge, Alexander sacrificed Speranskii’s policies and indeed Speranskii himself, whom he exiled to Siberia on trumped-up charges just before the invasion by Napoleon’s armies.

Napoleon’s Invasion