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The Origins of Alexander III’s Land Captains: A Reinterpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Thomas S. Pearson
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Abstract

The Land Captain Statute of 1889 is invariably regarded as the foremost legislative act of Alexander III’s reign, and with good reason. While Governor V. P. Golitsyn of Moscow probably exaggerated in calling it “no less significant and extensive than the peasant reform” of 1861,’ contemporary officials of diverse views agreed that it was the most controversial and important piece of domestic legislation in the 1880s. Yet for many years historians paid little attention to it or to Alexander III’s reign as a whole. Rather they dismissed the land captains (zemskie nachal'niki) as a reactionary institution intended to counter the revolutionary unrest of the late 1870s by increasing the patriarchal authority of the landed gentry. Soviet studies in the past two decades have filled in many details concerning the elaboration of the land captain legislation and have added a Marxist-Leninist slant in contending that gentry class interests influenced the autocracy to introduce the measure. Not surprisingly, they emphasize the role of A. D. Pazukhin, a wealthy gentry marshal and zemstvo board chairman from Alatyr' district (Simbirsk province), in drafting the counterreform during 1885-86 and persuading the infirm Minister of Internal Affairs D. A. Tolstoi (who died almost three months before the promulgation of the law on July 12, 1889) to support it. Yet in essence the Soviet interpretation of the land captains as part of a reactionary “new course” begun abruptly in the mid-1880s and designed to turn back the clock in the countryside adheres, as do most Western accounts on the topic, to the views of pre-Revolutionary “liberal” historians.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , Fall 1981 , pp. 384 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

1. Otdel Rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi Biblioteki SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, fond V. M. Golitsyn (1889), delo 15, list 421 (hereafter cited as ORGBL). The diary passage is for August 31, 1889.

2. Kornilov, A. A., Krest'ianskaia reforma (St. Petersburg, 1905), pp. 236–38Google Scholar; Gessen, V. M., Voprosy meslnago upravleniia (St. Petersburg, 1904 Google Scholar); and Veselovskii, B. B., lstoriia zemstva zasorok let. 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1909-11), 3:318–19Google Scholar.

3. For instance, Pazukhin, according to P. A. Zaionchkovskii, was “the basic figure in the counterreforms being prepared,” while S. N. Valk maintains that the gentry marshal was “one of the most brilliant spokesmen for the gentry” and formulated the government's policy oV'krepostnik reaction “ in the 1880s (see Zaionchkovskii, P. A., Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIXstoletiia [Moscow, 1970], pp. 71, 366Google Scholar and S. N. Valk, “Vnutrenniaia politika tsarizma v 80-90-kh godakh,” lstoriia SSSR, vol. 2: 1861-1917 gg. Period kapitalizma, ed. L. M. Ivanov, A. L. Sidorov, and V. K. Iatsunskii [Moscow, 1959], pp. 238, 240). All of the following works advance a similar argument: P. A. Zaionchkovskii, “Zakon o zemskikh nachal'nikakh 12 iiulia 1889 goda,” Nauchnye doklady vysshei shkoly. Istoricheskie nauki, 1961, no. 2, pp. 42-72; Zakharova, L. G., Zemskaia kontrreforma 1890g. (Moscow, 1968), p. 77 Google Scholar; Solov'ev, Iu. B., Samoderzhavie idvorianstvovkontse XIX veka (Leningrad, 1973), p. 184 Google Scholar; Pirumova, N. M., Zemskoe liberat'noe dvizhenie: Sotsial'nye korni i evoliutsiia do nachala XX veka (Moscow, 1977), pp. 38–39 Google Scholar; and Tvardovskaia, V. A., Ideologiia poreformennogo samoderzhaviia (M. N. Katkov i ego izdaniia) (Moscow, 1978), pp. 233–37 Google Scholar.

4. For example, see Seton-Watson, Hugh, The Decline of Imperial Russia, 1855-1914 (New York: Praeger, 1952), pp. 135–36Google Scholar and Florinsky, Michael T., Russia: A History and an Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1953), 2:1093 Google Scholar. In his recent dissertation on bureaucratic politics under Alexander III, Theodore Taranovski rejects the “gentry legislation” argument of Soviet historians and claims that the land captains signified an ideological victory for bureaucratic conservatives, who advocated a personalized absolutist order in the form of a Polizeistaat, over their “liberal” opponents, who supported the establishment of a rechtsstaat and pluralistic government in Russia. While Taranovski demonstrates that the elite tsarist bureaucracy was a distinct social group with its own professional ethos and goals, he largely follows the conventional line on the origins of the land captains. Thus, he maintains that Pazukhin provided Tolstoi, who lacked creativity and initiative, with the impetus and details for a land captain project in 1885 and 1886. Surprisingly, Taranovski plays down Tolstoi's professional development and bureaucratic identity and, like Soviet historians, argues that Tolstoi for personal economic and ideological reasons identified with gentry landlords from 1861 onward—even though elsewhere he regards Tolstoi as one of the most powerful officials in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century (cf. Theodore Taranovski, “The Politics of Counter-Reform: Autocracy and Bureaucracy in the Reign of Alexander III, 1881-1894” [Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1976], chap. 5).

5. George Yaney presents a similar argument in his study of domestic administrative development in Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Yaney's view the government introduced the land captains not only to systematize its control over the countryside but also to provide bureaucratic direction in meeting specific peasant needs and problems. However, Yaney provides little information on the concrete conditions in the peasant village in the 1870s and 1880s that influenced the government to take this step or on the bureaucratic obstacles that Tolstoi had to overcome to introduce the land captains (see Yaney, George L., The Systematization of Russian Government: Social Evolution in the Domestic Administration of Imperial Russia, 1711-1905 [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973], pp. 369–70, 372Google Scholar).

6. Gessen, , Voprosy mestnago upravleniia 199 Google Scholar; and Zaionchkovskii, , Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie, pp. 65, 71Google Scholar.

7. I. M. Strakhovskii, “Krest'ianskii vopros v zakonodatel'stve i zakonosoveshchatel'nykh komissiiakh posle 1861 g.,” Krest'ianskii stroi: Sbornik statei, vol. 1: Istoricheskaia chast', ed. P. D. Dolgorukov and S. D. Tolstoi (St. Petersburg, 1905), pp. 376-77.

8. See, for instance, “Zapiska P. A. Valueva Aleksandru II o provedenii reformy 1861 g. (Publikatsiia i predislovie O. N. Shepe\e\oi),” Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1961, no. 1, p. 71; the gubernatorial reports for 1865-68 in Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del. Istoricheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg, 1901), p. 721; and Chernukha, V. G., Krest'ianskii vopros vpravitel'stvennoipolitike Rossii (60-70-e gody XIX v.) (Leningrad, 1972), p. 56 Google Scholar.

9. In fact, the government began a formal investigation of peasant mismanagement of grain reserves, food shortages, and other problems of the village economy in 1872, with the creation of a commission under P. A. Valuev, then the newly appointed minister of state properties. It completed its work within the year and concluded that the depressed state of the peasant economy caused the problems in peasant administration and justice. The commission under Senator M. S. Liuboshchinskii (1871-74) to investigate the abuses in peasant justice concluded that these problems were widespread. Like the Valuev commission, it produced no practical recommendations, claiming that such proposals constituted the work of a subsequent commission. In view of the protracted work leading to the recent peasant emancipation, the government clearly had no desire to undertake new substantive reforms.

10. Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii, 2nd series, 55 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1830-84) (hereafter cited as PSZ), vol. 49, no. 53,678 (June 27, 1874).

11. The arrears for St. Petersburg province in 1880 were 767,555 rubles or 90.9 percent of the annual rate; in Saratov the corresponding figure was 794,506 rubles or 79.2 percent of the annual rate. While a recent series of poor harvests and the Russo-Turkish War in part accounted for this arrears buildup, other factors relating to peasant administration, as shown below, were just as instrumental in the process (see Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1870-1880 gg. Sbomik dokumentov, ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii [Moscow, 1966], pp. 30-31 and Druzhinin, N. M., Russkaia derevnia na perelome 1861-1880 gg. [Moscow, 1978], pp. 251–Google Scholar). In the 1870s top officials as a rule were especially alarmed when state tax arrears exceeded the annual tax rate. For instance, when such arrears showed up in seven districts in Smolensk province in 1872 and in certain districts in Novgorod province in 1874, the government immediately organized commissions to investigate the causes of the problem (see Chernukha, Krest'ianskii vopros, pp. 107, 111).

12. Among other factors, during the 1870s the number of peasants making redemption payments to the state rose from 55 percent (1870) to 85 percent (1881) (Chernukha, Krest'ianskii vopros, p. 84).

13. Under this law the district treasuries, if they received partial or undifferentiated payments of various local taxes, were allowed to earmark 12 percent of the total sum for local zemstvo taxes and divide the remainder into three equal portions—one for the payment of state taxes, another for the payment of food supply duties of state peasants, and the third for peasants on redemption payments (cf. PSZ. vol. 42, no. 44,297 [February 27, 1867]). Since the zemstvo taxes in nearly all provinces exceeded half the amount for state taxes, the zemstvos obviously suffered from this procedure of arbitrary allocations. For example, in Tambov province, where this procedure was followed, district zemstvo tax arrears in 1880 came to 40 percent of the annual zemstvo tax rate—a reasonably low figure—but a high one compared to the 6.5 percent rate for state tax arrears (cf. Malerialypo vysochaishe utverzhdennoi osoboi komissiidlia sostavleniiaproeklovmestnago upravleniia, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1884) [hereafter cited as MVUOK], vol. 3, Po senatorskim reviziiam, pt. 2, Zapiski senatora Mordvinova. document 7 p. 2.

14. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (TsGIA), f. Osobaia komissiia dlia sostavleniia proektov mestnogo upravleniia (Kakhanovskaia komissiia) [hereafter f. Kakhanovskaia komissiia], opis’ 1 (1881-85 gg.), d. 109,1. 71 ob. The Samara district zemstvos finally paid the salaries to these zemstvo personnel but only after receiving loans from the provincial zemstvo and the government. In the 1880s zemstvo insolvency in Samara province and elsewhere (Novgorod, Perm) became the rule.

15. In his December 22, 1880 circular to the governors, Loris-Melikov invited comment from the zemstvos and other public officials as well.

16. TsGIA, f. Departament obshchikh del Ministerstva vnutrennikh del (MVD) (1878), op. 69, d. 144,11. 4-4 ob. and ibid., 1879, d. 117, 11. 3-4.

17. Novgorod Governor E. V. Lerkhe and the sixteen provincial zemstvos that submitted petitions from 1875 to 1881 recommended increasing the number of permanent members (see below) or creating new supervisory officials to enforce the proper collection of taxes by police and peasant officials (cf. Karyshev, N. A., Zemskiia khodataistva 1865-1884 gg. [Moscow, 1900], p. 106 Google Scholar).

18. TsGIA, f. Departament obshchikh del MVD (1878), op. 69, d. 136,1.25. From 1879 to 1881 the provincial zemstvo assemblies in Samara, Kherson, and Viatka cited similar factors in explaining the district bureaus’ inability to supervise peasant administration and tax collection (cf. Skalon, V. Iu., Zemskie vzgliady na reformu mesmago upravleniia: Obzor zemskikh otzyvov i proektov [Moscow, 1884], pp. 50–Google Scholar). The situation in Tambov province in 1880 typified the concrete problems, pointed out by nearly everyone involved with local government, that faced the district bureau in supervising tax collection. In 1880 there were 123 cases in Tambov province in which peasant officials misplaced or stole communal funds, an average of 9 per district. Such irregularities arose because the district bureaus, too shorthanded to inspect each volost’ administration (as stipulated by law), rubber-stamped the records compiled by the volost’ scribe on the amount of taxes collected in the district. The possibilities for graft by the scribe and tax collectors were limitless, as exemplified in the village of Guliny, where tax losses were the highest in Morshan district. In Guliny several minor tax collectors customarily assisted the public tax collector in levying duties, and local records disclosed that a few individuals monopolized these voluntary posts for years at a time. The reasons were clear enough, as senatorial inspector S. A. Mordvinov discovered in 1881. Given the peasants’ illiteracy, these tax collectors made a lucrative income by embezzling sizable amounts of the taxes they collected and accusing the peasants of not paying. But the Morshan district bureau took no action because it could not prove who was criminally responsible—the public tax collector or the peasant volunteers. See MVUOK. Zapiskisenatora Mordvinova, document 8, pp. 21, 24; and ibid., document 5, p. 23.

19. They recommended that permanent members be elected by district rather than provincial zemstvo assemblies because the latter frequently were unacquainted with the various district nominees (or the post and invariably made poor choices (cf. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii [TsGAOR], f. T. 1. Filippov [1882 or later], op. 1, d. 543, 11. 22-22 ob.

20. Ibid., 11. 23 ob.-2A.

21. Kataev, M. M., Mestnyia krest'ianskiia uehrezhdeniia 1861, 1874 i 1889 gg. (Istoricheskii ocherk ikh obrazovaniia i norm deiatel'nosti), 3 parts (St. Petersburg, 1911), 2:113 Google Scholar.

22. TsGAOR, f. Filippov, op. 1, d. 543, 1. 28 ob.

23. Ibid., 11. 28-31 ob.

24. See A. A. Polovtsov's diary entry for August 2,1879 in TsGAOR, f. A. A. Polovtsov (1879-80), op. 1, d. 15, 11. 69-70, and Valuev's passage for June 3, 1879 in his Dnevnik 1877-1884 gg., ed. V. la. lakovlev-Bogucharskii and P. E. Shchegolev (Petrograd, 1919), p. 38.

25. Quoted from Polovtsov's diary entry of September 21, 1881 in TsGAOR, f. Polovtsov, op. 1, d. 20, 1. 10.

26. There is still no published analysis of the administrative and economic problems revealed by the senatorial inspectors. Soviet historian Bol'shov merely outlines the territorial and subject areas of the inspections without really discussing the senators’ findings (cf. V. V. Bol'shov, “Materialy senatorskikh revizii 1880-1881 gg. kak istochnik po istorii mestnogo upravleniia Rossii,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, series 2, Istoriia, 1976, no. 4, pp. 38-54). Other accounts provide either cursory descriptions of the inspection procedures or dismiss the inspections as a political ruse by Loris-Melikov, the newly appointed minister of internal affairs. See Blinov, I. A.'s brief essay in Istoriiapravitel'stvuiushchago senata za dvesli let 1711-1911 gg., 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1911), 4:182 Google Scholar; Zaionchkovskii, P. A., Krizis samoderzhaviia na rubezhe 1870-1880-kh godov (Moscow, 1964), pp. 238–43 Google Scholar; and M. I. Kheifets, Vloraia revoliutsionnaia situalsiia v Rossii (Konets 70-kh-nachalo 80-kh godov XIX veka). Krizis pravitel'stvennoipolitiki (Moscow, 1963), pp. 102, 105-106, 191. The numerous problems in peasant and zemstvo self-government pointed out by the inspectors are discussed at some length in Thomas S. Pearson, “Ministerial Conflict and Local Self-Government Reform in Russia, 1877-1890” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977), chap. 2. However, much scholarly work remains to be done with the inspection materials—information that is one of our best sources on the activity of local government, the attitude of the provincial population toward local officials, and the central government's perception of rural subjects and their needs.

27. E. S. Paina, “Senatorskie revizii i ikh arkhivnye materialy (XlX-nachalo XX v.),” Nekotorye voprosy izucheniia istoricheskikh dokumentov XlX-nachala XX v. Sbornik statei, ed. I. N. Firsov (Leningrad, 1967), pp. 165-66.

28. “Senatorskie revizii 1880 goda,” Russkii arkhiv, 50 (1912): 419, 421-23.

29. Bol'shov, “Materialy senatorskikh revizii 1880-1881 gg.,” p. 40.

30. MVUOK, Zapiski senalora Mordvinova, document 1, p. 11.

31. Ibid., document 7, p. 3.

32. Quoted from ibid., p. 4.

33. A survey of 34 provinces commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in January 1880 showed that there were 4,650 literate volost’ elders and 3,227 illiterate ones. For village elders, however, the figures were 15,951 literate and 68,968 illiterate. Peasant officials in the provinces inspected by the senators had even higher rates of illiteracy—clear proof that one of the prerequisites for genuine public self-government in the village still remained unfulfilled (cf. TsGIA, f. Kakhanovskaia komissiia, op. 1, d. 83, 11. 21 ob.-29 ob.

34. Ibid., d. 11, 11. 28-28 ob.

35. MVUOK, Zapiski senatora Mordvinova, document 1, p. 11.

36. See Astyrev, N. M., V volostnykh pisariakh: Ocherki kresl'ianskago samoupravleniia (Moscow, 1886), pp. 150–51 Google Scholar.

37. TsGIA, f. Reviziia senatora I. I. Shamshina SaratovskoiiSamarskoigubernii( 1880-81), op. 1, d. 6, 11. 17 ob.-lS.

38. Ibid., f. Kakhanovskaia komissiia, op. 1, d. 11, 1. 28 ob.

39. Ibid., d. 59, 11. 20 ob.-2l, 24, 25 ob. The document is dated October 9, 1881.

40. Ibid., d. 11, 1. 21.

41. Ibid., d. 59, 1. 25. Similar peasant pleas for government supervision came in 1881 from Ivan Simakov(ina letter to Alexander III) and from state peasant Grigorii Porosiatnikov(cf. ibid.,11. 190-92 ob. and 11. 428-29).

42. MVUOK, vol. 1-2, pp. 17-18.

43. Pazukhin was by no means the only official to recommend zemstvo judges with combined administrative and judicial powers, contrary to what historians of the period have implied. Senator Shamshin, in the conclusion to his inspection reports, recommended such an official as part of his program to overhaul local government from the district level down. This is important because it shows that Shamshin, rather than Pazukhin, made the issue of the combination of powers a part of top official debate over local government reform during 1882-83. As for Pazukhin, his plan for creating such officials was one of several projects voted down by provincial zemstvo assemblies in 1881. Pazukhin's own Simbirsk provincial assembly, along with those of Penza and Moscow, repudiated such proposals (cf. TsGIA, f. Kakhanovskaia komissiia, op. 1, d. 109, 1. 80 and ibid., d. 114, 11. 50, 52-54, 58.

44. TsGAOR, f. Polovtsov, op. 1, d. 20, 1. 45 ob.

45. Cf. E. M., Feoktistov. Vospominaniia E. M. Feoktistova. Zakulisamipolitikiiliteralury 1848-1896, ed. Oksman, Iu. G. (Leningrad, 1929), p. 212 Google Scholar and the comments of Katkov, and Zaionchkovskii, A. A. Kizevetterin, Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie pp. 149–Google Scholar.

46. See Polovtsov's diary passage for June 1882 in TsGAOR, f. Polovtsov, op. 1, d. 20, 1. 79.

47. Pobedonostsev attacked the subcommission's project because, in his view, it would diffuse all power and, through the democratic rule of peasants, produce complete anarchy. He concluded his letter by complaining to Tolstoi that: I have read many senseless, stupid, incoherent, and worthless projects in recent years—but never anything like this. It is literally the work of children playing at the game of making government legislation.… The realization of such a project is inconceivable to me; may we never live to see such a thing. It would signify such an utter decline in the administrative mind of Russia that my spirit is unwilling to contemplate it. The project is written, as luck would have it, to destroy all authority in Russia, to splinter it into myriads of unconnected grains of sand. Quoted from Pobedonostsev's letter of September 11/23, 1883 in K. P. Pobedonostsev i ego korrespondemy: Pis'ma i zapiski, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923), p. 315.

48. Cf. passage for November 26, 1883 in Dnevnikgosudarstvennogo sekretaria Polovtsova, A. A. v dvukh lomakh, ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1966), 1:148 Google Scholar.

49. In contrast, Zaionchkovskii and Taranovski argue that Tolstoi did not interfere simply because he had little idea of the problems of local self-government and the means to rectify them until Pazukhin provided him with a plan for counterreforms in January 1885 (cf. Zaionchkovskii, , Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie, p. 218 Google Scholar and Taranovski, “The Politics of Counter-Reform,” chap. 5).

50. Although Pobedonostsev arranged Tolstoi's appointment as minister ofinternal affairs in 1882, the two officials were at odds almost from the start concerning clerical schools and the university counterreforms. See Vospominaniia E. M. Feoktistova, pp. 224-25 and ORGBL, f. M. N. Katkov (1884), karton 12, d. 27, 1. 12 ob.

51. Katkov expressed disappointment over Tolstoi's appointment as minister ofinternal affairs in 1882, undoubtedly because of their previous disagreements. For his part, Tolstoi complained to Alexander III on numerous occasions in the early 1880s about Katkov's interference in his ministry's affairs (see Feoktistov's letter of October 16, 1882 to Katkov in ORGBL, f. M.N. Katkov [1882], k. 12, d. 24, 1. 8 and Allen, Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery: State Educational Reform in Russia under Count Dmitry Tolstoi [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973], pp. 169–70,253–54Google Scholar).

52. Cf. Zaionchkovskii, , Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie, p. 59 Google Scholar; and Yaney, , Systematization of Russian Government, pp. 311–Google Scholar.

53. Quoted from Sinel, , Classroom and Chancellery, p. 56 Google Scholar.

54. A claim that the governors deliberately distorted the picture of local administration is found in M. Akhun, “Istochniki dlia izucheniia istorii gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii tsarskoi Rossii (X1X-XX vv.),” Arkhivnoe delo, 1939, no. 1, p. 84. Yet the very length of many gubernatorial replies is proof that the governors took pains to provide as accurate an evaluation as possible. Moreover, Chairman Kakhanov, while distressed by the tone of the governors’ criticisms, still deemed them of sufficient importance to be hastily collated and distributed to the full commission before its first meeting on October 5, 1884 (cf. TsGIA, f. Kantseliariia MVD, op. 2, d. 15, 1. 412).

55. TsGIA, f. Kantseliariia MVD, op. 2, d. 12, 11. 413-413 ob.

56. Ibid., 11. 360 o/>.-361 and ibid., d. 13, 11. 540-43, 560-61 ob.

57. Ibid., 11. 227 o6.-228.

58. Ibid., d. 15, 11. 305 ob.-306. Pazukhin's article, “Sovremennoe sostoianie Rossii i soslovnyi vopros,” was published in the January 1885 issue of Katkov's Russkii vestnik.

59. Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v 1881-1889gg., pp. 262-397passim. Although peasant unrest during 1883-84 was disturbing to Tolstoi, in that it signified a disrespect for local law and authority, it would be a mistake to view it as the primary factor in Tolstoi's decision to introduce land captains. More likely, Tolstoi used the incidents of peasant unrest to sell his proposals to recalcitrant ministers and to retain imperial confidence. In the most noteworthy case of the latter, Tolstoi, despite the fact that not one largescale peasant disturbance occurred during 1888-89, convinced Alexander III that further delays in the enactment of the land captain legislation would mean peasant riots in the summer of 1889. The argument obviously impressed the tsar, who pressured the State Council in late 1888 to finish its review of the project (see the passage for December 22, 1888 [in which Alexander III mentioned the possibility of peasant riots] in Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretaria A. A. Polovtsova, 1:132).

60. Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretaria A. A. Polovtsova, 1:256.

61. Meshcherskii, V. P., Moi vospominaniia, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1897-1912), 3:145 Google Scholar.

62. Tvardovskaia claims that in 1884 Pazukhin, on Tolstoi's instructions, drafted a memorandum (calling for a reorganization of local administration and zemstvo representation) that circulated among top officials. She obviously makes this point to show that Pazukhin literally altered the course of state policy. Yet she fails to cite a source for this information or to explain when Pazukhin wrote the document and Tolstoi's purpose in having it drafted (see Tvardovskaia, , Ideologiia poreformennogo samoderzhaviia, p. 233 Google Scholar). If such a memorandum existed (I did not see it in any of the relevant archives in Leningrad and Moscow), its existence alone does not prove Tolstoi's commitment to Pazukhin's views. In all likelihood, the memorandum merely reiterated points that Pazukhin made in his counterproject and, as shown below, provided Tolstoi with additional material to discredit the Kakhanov Commission and a further pretext for closing it down in early 1885.

63. Pazukhin, A. D., Sovremennoesostoianie Rossiiisoslovnyi vopros (Moscow, 1886), pp. 6–12, 23–24 Google Scholar.

64. Ibid., pp. 20-22, 37-38, 58-59. Pazukhin emphasized that the government, under the current conditions of political life and complex needs of administration, could not fulfill these needs by bureaucracy alone, but required the assistance of public officials.

65. Cf. Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekrelaria A. A. Polovtsova, 2:191; TsGIA, f. Departament zakonov Gosudarstvennogo Soveta (1887-89), op. t. XI, d. 44,1. 216 ob. and f. Kantseliariia MVD, op. 2, d. 17, 1. 326.

66. TsGIA, f. Kantseliariia MVD, op. 2, d. 20, 1. 41.

67. TsGIA, f. Departament zakonov Gosudarstvennogo Soveta, op. t. XI, d. 44, 11. 24, 222; ibid., f. Kantseliariia MVD, op. 2, d. 17,11. 337 ob., 342-42 ob.\ and Meshcherskii, V. P., Moi vospominaniia, 3:291–92Google Scholar.

68. Cf. Golovin, K. F., Vospominaniia, 2:102 Google Scholar; Dnevnikgosudarstvennogo sekretaria A. A. Polovtsova, 2:130; and Kataev, , Mestnyia krest'ianskiia uchrezhdeniia, 3:28 Google Scholar.

69. Cf. Kataev, , Mestnyia krest'ianskiia uchrezhdeniia, 3:28 Google Scholar. A. A. Kireev's comment that the land captain legislation would be effective only if the gentry forgot about their rights and fulfilled their duty suggests why many gentry were indignant over Tolstoi's proposal (see Kireev's diary entry for January 1889 in ORGBL, f. A. A. Kireev, k. 11,1.98). Bekhteev, Pazukhin's former collaborator in the Kakhanov Commission, was likewise so shocked by the stamp of bureaucratization on Tolstoi's land captain project that he could hardly believe that Pazukhin had helped draft it (cf. Golovin, , Vospominaniia, 2:102 Google Scholar).

70. From late 1885 to 1886 Pazukhin, apparently having consulted with Tolstoi, worked independently on drafting counterreform projects, while Tolstoi recuperated from illness in the Crimea. But following the attack of several ministers (Pobedonostsev, Minister of Justice N. A. Manasein, and others) on a preliminary version of the projects in April 1886, Tolstoi took a more active part in correcting Pazukhin's drafts. In the years 1887-89 Tolstoi himself presented the projects to his fellow ministers and state council members and defended them against the opposition. See Tolstoi's letter of June 2, 1886 to Pobedonostsev in K. P. Pobedonostsev i ego korrespondenty, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 584.

71. Emphasis mine. Not without reason Tolstoi added that in one of the southeastern provinces alone 720 officials were responsible for the loss of 226,915 rubles from 1875 to 1880. Quoted from TsGIA, f. Kantseliariia MVD, op. 2, d. 17, 1. 332.

72. Ibid., 1. 335 ob.

73. Ibid., 1. 330 ob. and ibid., f. Departament obshchikh del MVD, op. 241, d. 51,11. 9 O/J.-IO.

74. After a year and a half of intermittent, often rancorous debate, the State Council voted 39-13 against Tolstoi's project. His opponents rallied around a counterproject drafted in September 1888 by Count 1. 1. Vorontsov-Dashkov, the minister of the imperial household, which called for a systematic overhaul of the district administration and the establishment of district chiefs without judicial powers. The Vorontsov-Dashkov counterproject won much support because it upheld the principle of separation of powers that many of the council members, as Alexander ll's reformers, introduced into law in the 1860s. Moreover, the district chiefs were not the agents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with control over village financial and judicial affairs that Tolstoi had in mind. Alexander III, recently distressed by Tolstoi's poor performance in the State Council debates, nonetheless supported Tolstoi's view of bureaucratic control because, in his opinion, it offered the best prospects for continued autocratic government. Ironically, the emperor's decision was an example of imperial arbitrariness in central policy making that Tolstoi himself was trying to mJBiaajze by organizing a clear system of central control under the direction of the minister of internaJi(faif (cfwvm' gosudarstvennogo sekretaha A. A. Polovtsova, 2:278-79).

75. Vitte, S. Iu., Vospominaniia, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1960), 1:298 Google Scholar.

76. Seredonin, S. G., comp., Istorkheskii obzor deiatel'nosli Komitetu ministrov, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1902), 4:330 Google Scholar.

77. Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretaria A. A. Polovisova, 2:235-36. 495.