Abstract

This paper examines the projects of administrative reforms, which were submitted to the emperor and his entourage in 1856–1860 and mainly preserved in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Their authors strived to persuade the authorities to launch full-fledged reforms of the administrative system. However, unlike the followers of the ideas of decentralization and self-government fashionable at that time and presented, in particular, in A. de Tocqueville’s notorious book The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, they insisted that it is necessary to restore centralization in full. These ideas, which may be called traditionalist, implied, first of all, the emperor’s effective control over all branches of administration. To this end, it was first of all necessary to relieve the sovereign of a host of routine matters; to put an end to the uncontrolled status of ministers by establishing a collective body answerable to the monarch; to implement a kind of provincial “power vertical” by restoring the institution of governor-generalship and extending it to the whole country; and finally, to enhance the prestige of the Tsar’s local representatives (governors) through broadening their competence and making the sovereign more accessible to them. The emperor favourably reacted to the ideas of a council of ministers, governor-generalships and expansion of the powers of local authorities. The Council of Ministers was created, but it never became an exact analogue of the European governments, and remained a specific body which duplicated the Committee of Ministers. As for the idea of governor-generalships on the entire territory of Russia, it remained only on paper. Stormy public debates about decentralization had also no effect on the drafting of reforms: the results of the work of the so-called Milyutin Commission, which prepared a provincial reform based on the idea of decentralizing local government, were shelved. In this sense, the pre-reform period can be called a time of “administrative inaction”.