SUMMARY:

Alsu Biktasheva turns to the greatly understudied topic of Senate inspections in Imperial Russia. Even though the exact statistics of inspections is unknown, the information related to the eighteenth century is particularly fragmentary. Between 1800 and 1915, some 120-125 inspections took place. Biktasheva distinguishes several stages in the history of Senate inspections, differentiated by the quantity of inspections and their function. Before Paul I introduced special legislation regulating the procedure and frequency of Senate inspections, it was an ad hoc instrument of administrative intervention into local affairs and collecting information. It was Alexander I who made Senate inspections a principal tool of his regime: fifty-two of those 120-125 known inspections took place during his twenty-five years in power (the next quarter of the century under Nicholas I witnessed only thrity-eight inspections, and just thirty to thirty-five inspections were staged over the next seventy-five years). Under Nicholas and his successors, Senate inspectors were sent out to investigate the causes of a various dramatic events: social disorder, a draught, a famine. Alexander I attempted to use inspections as a mechanism for establishing a rapport with society, a tribunal settling complaints of the population against the local administration, and as a mechanism for gathering “objective” on-site information from situations. In the absence of a modern state apparatus, rationalized legislation, and trained bureaucracy, inspections were seen by the Emperor as the most efficient way to impose justice and protect state interests. In his personification of politics, Alexander trusted people rather than institutes, and explained the corruption and inefficiency of administration by the personality of certain officials. Moreover, by authorizing inspecting Senators to use local gentry as investigators, Alexander de facto enfranchised them as citizens who had more authority than any government administrator.