Mikhail Speransky in the Presidential Library’s collections: "... Laws without morals cannot have full effect"

January 12, 1772 Russian statesman, reformer, legislator Mikhail Speransky was born. The son of a priest in one of the rural parishes of Vladimir Province, through his abilities, deep moral roots, and hard work, was drawn by Emperor Alexander I to reform Russian law. In the collections of the Presidential Library “Mikhail Speransky (1772–1839)” he is represented as the author of the plan of liberal transformations, the initiator of the creation of the State Council and the head of the codification of the basic state laws of the Russian Empire.

Mikhail Mikhailovich graduated from the Vladimir Seminary, upon admission to which he, named after his father Mikhailov, received the surname Speransky (from the Latin sperare – to hope). Being the best student Speransky was sent to the seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg and in 1792, having completed the course, was left there as a professor of mathematics, physics and eloquence. Three years later he was appointed the prefect (head) of the seminary. It would seem that a career was brilliant, but “we have evidence,” - writes V. Yakushkin in the publication Speransky and Arakcheev, - despite the official success and at the mercy of the authorities, Speransky was often bored with condition of his service. He wrote to a friend: “I am sick, my friend, and in endless troubles. Have pity on the person whom everyone asks, who wants good and rare to make him can and is torn by the fact that the position of him is deceiving many - position, not heart. Have pity on a man who is so jealous of"".   

In 1801, after serving in the office of the procurator general, Speransky received the rank of a real secret adviser and began to draw up various government decrees and manifestos. In 1803, on behalf of Alexander I, he wrote “Notes on the structure of judicial and government institutions in Russia” (1803), on the basis of which six years later he presented the “Plan for the State Transformation of Count Mikhail Speransky” (1809), where he showed himself as a supporter of the gradual transformation of autocracy into a constitutional monarchy on the basis of a thought-out plan. In 1803–1807, Mikhail Mikhailovich served in the Ministry of the Interior. During these years he wrote works that promoted him to the row of the first political thinkers of the time: “Reflections on the state structure of the empire”, “On the spirit of the government”. In 1807, he became the state secretary of the emperor, and in 1808 he accompanied Alexander I to Erfurt to meet with Napoleon Bonaparte, who called Speransky "the only clear mind in Russia".

In 1809, on behalf of Alexander I, Mikhail Mikhailovich drew up a plan for state transformations - “Introduction to the regulation of state laws”. That was a project of reforms that were supposed to be carried out from above and at the same time preserved the autocratic power of the sovereign, which Baron M. Korf reveals in his study “The life of Count Speransky”; You can learn about the publication in the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library.

In Speransky’s plan, a harmonious system of central and local government was developed, based on the principle of separation of powers — legislative, executive, and judicial. Elections were introduced into the administrative and executive authorities, but participation in the administration was granted only to persons with certain property qualifications. The supreme administrative body was the State Duma, on places, respectively, the provincial district and parish dumas. By the same principle executive authorities were formed. Another supreme body was also established to unite the activities of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches — the Council of State, the legislative institution under the emperor. Members were not elected, but appointed by the emperor himself.

Speransky’s work as secretary of state and indispensable assistant to the emperor came at a time when Pushkin’s words “the days of Aleksandrov were a great beginning” belonged; it is described in the book by A. Umants Alexander and Speransky. The following words of Karamzin also speak about understanding the role of the latter in streamlining legislation: “This work is great, but it is of such a quality that it cannot be entrusted to many. One person must be the main, true creator of the Russian Code; others can serve him only as advisers, assistants, workers ... Here unity of thought is necessary for the perfection of the parts and the whole; unity of will is necessary for success”.

But there were influential detractors like Arakcheev, whose denunciations in the name of Alexander I led to the reference of Speransky to Nizhny Novgorod and further to Perm. The confrontation between two statesmen is described in the study by V. Yakushkin “Speransky and Arakcheev” from the collections of the Presidential Library. there is a quote from Pushkin in this work: "You and Arakcheev, you stand at the door opposite to this reign, as the geniuses of good and evil". On the basis of Speransky’s thesis, “Changes in freedom and power take place on a moral basis”. Pushkin makes his conclusion: “The best and most solid changes are those that come from a single moral improvement, without violent political shocks, terrible for humanity ...”

Not all bold projects of Speransky could be implemented, but in 1810 the State Council was established, and in 1811 the reorganization of the ministries was completed.

The influence of Speransky on the era of Alexander I, his contribution to the development and adjustment of legislation under Nicholas I was appreciated by contemporaries of the statesman and his followers of other eras. In the publication “Emperor Nicholas I and Speransky” A. Philippov calls the implemented “Complete Collection of Laws” in 45 volumes, which absorbed more than 30 thousand various decrees, acts and decrees, “gigantic enterprise”, “the greatest deed of this reign”. “No matter how later the descendants judge the codification of our right in this reign”, the author writes, “the names of Emperor Nicholas I and Count Speransky will always be remembered together as living witnesses of a grandiose deed committed by them”.