M. M. Speransky’s Administrative Reform Projects in a Comparative Retrospective of the Reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I

Abstract

This article studies the reforms and reformist searches in the sphere of public administration during the reign of Alexander I and the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I, the successive and distinctive features of the government reform policy in the context of the project activity of M. M. Speransky. The author focuses on determining the reasons for the actualization of transformations in the system of the higher and central apparatus between 1802 and the early 1830s, analysing the specifics of the modernization process in different periods of the institutional development of Russia, identifying similarities and differences in the “administrative structure” of Alexander I and Nicholas I. It has been established that, in general, the official reformation in the field of public administration in the first third of the nineteenth century, based on the theoretical and conceptual framework developed by M. M. Speransky, was consistent, systemic, and interconnected and was an integral part of the modernization of Russian statehood. The author demonstrates that the transformational searches of the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I reflected in the activities of the Committee on December 6, 1826, and being a logical continuation of the reforms of Alexander I, were aimed at creating an effective, unified, and rationalized management system of absolutism of the New Age. The administrative transformations of the two epochs were subject to legislative reform and were an integral part of two models of relations between the government and society, Alexander and Nicholas, respectively.