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.
