INTRODUCTION

The transformation of feudal into absolute monarchies on the European continent in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries involved the development of increasingly centralized, effective, and uniform administrations. Despite its lack of a feudal past, Russia faced analogous problems and made notable progress in solving them with Peter I’s reform of central administration and Catherine II’s of provincial government. In the West, the development of administrative uniformity culminated in the French Revolution and was accompanied by the replacement of absolutism with constitutional government. Subjects were transformed into citizens enjoying legal equality and administration was reorganized along rational rather than traditional lines. In France départements replaced historic provinces, and uniform judicial and tax systems replaced the regional variety inherited from centuries past.
Most of the projects discussed in this article should be seen in the context of this movement toward administrative uniformity long in progress in Europe. Pestel’s Russkaia pravda, on the other hand, is an early example of those “sweeping new visions of states and societies” that arose from “the confidence in the transformative powers of the state” and characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.^[1] The empire’s many ethnic groups were to be totally absorbed by the Russians in order to form a new, culturally homogeneous population. To attain this goal, there was to be mass resettlement and subdivision of obdurate peoples of the Caucasus and mass expulsion of Jews and Gypsies. In this respect, Pestel’s vision went well beyond that of the Jacobins of the 1790s, with whose basic aim he was in accord. The Jacobins had not envisioned any group’s resettlement or expulsion, but they had emphasized the need for citizens to be united by a common language and common values. As one scholar has noted, “When a country was governed by a limited ruling class it did not matter what language the masses spoke, so long as they kept their place.”^[2] When governmental authority came to be based on popular sovereignty, however, the cultural unity of the masses did matter greatly.

PROJECTS FOR ALEXANDER I

During the Napoleonic era, at the very time that France’s example and expansion were fueling the development of national consciousness in the minds of Europeans and of those Russians abreast of events in Europe, Russia’s population was rapidly becoming increasingly mixed ethnically. At Alexander I’s accession in 1801 the empire already included the Finns of southeastern Finland; the Germans, Estonians, and Latvians of the Baltic gubernii; the Lithuanians, Poles, and Jews of Lithuania; the Poles and Jews of Belorussia and Ukraine, together with majority populations which were regarded by the regime and the elite as Russians whose speech – and often, religion – had been corrupted by centuries of Polish rule; and the overwhelmingly non-Russian populations of the Crimea, parts of the North Caucasus, the middle and lower Volga basin, and all of Siberia with the adjacent fringes of the Kazakh Steppe. By 1815 much of the South Caucasus, the remainder of Finland, all of Bessarabia, and a large segment of ethnic Poland were added to the non-Russian borderlands.
The projects for political reform drafted in Alexander’s reign dealt very differently with the empire’s longstanding and growing ethnic diversity. Those drafted for the eyes of the emperor, with the exception of Speranskii’s in 1809, clung to the conception of the empire as a dynastic state. For them, the presence of ethnic diversity was a familiar feature and no more serious a problem than it had been in the past. For Speranskii’s, Murav’ev’s, and Pestel’s projects, all of which accepted popular sovereignty as the basis of the state’s legitimacy, this new concept had somehow to be reconciled with the empire’s multiethnic character.
Suggestions to the emperor on standardizing administrative institutions covered a broad range. A memorandum presented to Alexander in November 1801 by Count A. R. Vorontsov upon his appointment as state chancellor contained advice on several issues, including criticism of the 1775 statute on provincial government. Among other points, Vorontsov argued,

“there was hardly a need to extend it to provinces annexed and conquered by us, which had themselves more structure than [exists] in Russia’s interior, or to [our] Asiatic [provinces], for which such administration is alien and unsuitable, given their size and the local inhabitants’ manner of life and customs.”^[3]

As the provinces better organized than the metropole, Vorontsov undoubtedly had in mind Vyborg, Estland, Lifland, and Kurland, where the traditional institutions abolished by the introduction of the 1775 statute had been restored in 1796-1797 in response to pressure from the local nobility; Vorontsov was a proponent of the aristocracy’s role in politics.^[4] The provincial institutions introduced by Catherine were deemed wrong for Asiatic Russia for the opposite reason – that the region was too underdeveloped to be able to profit from them. Vorontsov’s memorandum was an example of the conviction that different parts of Russia’s empire required, for different reasons, varying treatments. Alexander followed a middle course between Catherine’s and Vorontsov’s, generally applying the 1775 statute with only minor adjustments necessitated by local conditions – except in the cases of the Baltic provinces and the lands he himself annexed (much of the Caucasus, Finland, Bessarabia, and Poland).
Russia’s western borderlands were also a major concern in the November 1806 joint memorandum sent to Alexander by three of his confidants, members of his Unofficial Committee: Prince A. J. Czartoryski, Count P. A. Stroganov, and N. N. Novosil’tsev – deputy ministers, respectively, of foreign affairs, internal affairs, and justice. Alarmed by Napoleon’s crushing of Prussia several weeks earlier, the three advised the emperor of Russia’s perilous position and suggested measures to resolve it.^[5] Their memorandum warned, among other dangers, of the possible secession of the borderlands most immediately threatened by Prussia’s collapse as a buffer: “One word about freedom pronounced by Bonaparte in these provinces [Kurland and Lifland] will be the signal for [their] being torn away and for bloodshed.” The three accused Napoleon of plotting Poland’s restoration as a French satellite, initially including the Prussian and Austrian shares of the eighteenth-century partitions: “Every Russian knows that since 1792 the Polish nation (natsiia) has not ceased to dream of its unification and the recovery of its political existence.” Poles were being encouraged by France to believe that only with her backing could they achieve “liberation, as they call it.” In addition to Kurland and Lifland, the Russian share of the Polish partitions was at stake:

“[A]t the least failure, God forbid, of our arms, one manifesto from Napoleon, a sejm (diet) assembled by him, [and] strong armies led by him will ignite a blaze which inevitably will inflame also the provinces joined to Russia from Poland. …Internal unrest and revolts will coincide with war against external foes…”

In such an event the Ottoman Empire would be tempted to attack along the Dnestr and to try to recover the Crimea. Among the specific proposals to deal with the imminent crisis, the three authors suggested “a federative system” between the Polish kingdom and the Russian Empire. Federation would “revive the ancient bond between the [two] like-minded nations,” augment the defensive strength of both, and gain the gratitude of the Poles. The memorandum neither specified the borders of the resurrected Polish kingdom nor proposed methods of binding more closely to Russia her Baltic provinces.
N. M. Karamzin’s 1811 Memorandum on Ancient and Modern Russia, written at the instigation of Alexander I’s sister Catherine, but apparently never read by the emperor, took a stance opposite to Vorontsov’s a decade earlier with respect to the empire’s multiethnic nature. Instead of advising varying treatment of different regions and their peoples, Karamzin argued for administrative uniformity as a long-term goal, to be achieved through education:

“Our state consists of various peoples (narody) who have their own particular civil statutes, as is the case in Livonia, Finland, Poland, even Little Russia. Should one [immediately] introduce uniformity of laws? One should, if such a change will not be an essential, enduring disaster for these oblasti; in the contrary case, one should not. Much better to make ready for it [the change] ahead of time by preparatory means, without compulsion and by acting on the impressionable minds of youth. Let the young people of these regions who desire to devote themselves to the law be tested in their knowledge also of general Russian laws, and especially of our language. That is the best preparation for the desired uniformity of civil statutes!”^[6]

If a particular law of Livonia or Finland, for example, were compatible with the state’s welfare, and if changing it would harm morals or weaken the bonds uniting the social estates of the region, it would be better, Karamzin advised, to leave it unchanged – at least till it could be altered without ill effect. He seems to have been thinking only of Russia’s European borderlands.
Poland for Karamzin was always a sore issue. His memorandum criticized Russia’s recognition of Napoleon’s satellite state, the Duchy of Warsaw, in 1807. In the late eighteenth-century partitions, “we took what was ours,” i.e., part of Russia’s ancient patrimony. “[I]t is vital for our security,” furthermore, “that Poland not exist in any form nor under any name.” Surely, not in the form of a kingdom linked to Russia in the personal union of 1815, with its own laws, administration, and army – a form similar to that proposed by Czartoryski and his comrades. Finland was a totally different story for Karamzin: “By taking Finland [in 1809], we have earned the hatred of the Swedes and the reproach of all nations (narody),” thereby undermining the empire’s moral strength and consequently its security.^[7] Indeed, Finland, and Poland even more, were to prove indigestible to the very end of the old regime in Russia.
Novosil’tsev’s Constitutional Charter (Gosudarstvennaia ustavnaia gramota), drawn up in 1819-1820 on Alexander’s commission, proposed complete uniformity for the empire’s political structure, disregarded almost totally Russia’s ethnic diversity, and granted to the nation a very minor role in the legislative process. Article 1 divided “the Russian state, with all the possessions joined to it, under whatever designation,…into large regions called viceroyalties.” Novosil’tsev’s intent was the total administrative integration of the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Kingdom of Poland, the Bessarabian oblast’, and other borderlands into the metropole – to be accomplished by extending to the rest of the empire some of the privileges recently granted to Finland and Poland, but in a substantially watered down form. Ten or twelve viceroyalties, plus two capital districts consisting of St. Petersburg and Moscow gubernii, were contemplated.^[8] Article 2 defined a viceroyalty as consisting of

“a certain number of gubernii, depending on its population, distance [from the center, presumably], and size, and taking into consideration the mores, customs, and particular or local laws which bind the inhabitants together.”

This was one of only two references to ethnic diversity in the Charter; the other was article 167’s exclusion of Jews from participating in the assemblies of okrug municipal societies. Okrugi were the new subdivisions within uezdy proposed in article 5.
Articles 11 and 12 implicitly rejected the notion of popular sovereignty, asserting instead, respectively, that “Sovereignty is indivisible; it is concentrated in the person of the monarch” and that “The Sovereign is the single source in the Empire of all civil, political, legislative, and military authority.” Article 13, however, made a token concession: “the state diet (seim) assists the Sovereign’s legislative authority.” This concession was elaborated upon in article 91: “Henceforth the Russian people (Rossiiskii narod) shall always have national (narodnoe) representation. It should consist of a state diet or state duma composed of the Sovereign and two chambers,” the names of the latter taken from the Polish model – a Senate and a chamber of envoys (posol’skaia palata). Article 101 repeated the diet’s auxiliary role: “Legislative authority inheres in the person of the Sovereign with the assistance of the two chambers of the state diet.” Article 100 divided the state legislature into a general diet for the empire and regional diets for the viceroyalties; articles 124 and 125 gave to the two capital regions diets identical to those of the viceroyalties.
George Vernadsky’s comparison of the viceroyalty “to a state in a federation” and his use of the term “the federative organization of the state” for what the Charter proposed^[9] are belied by the Charter’s provisions. Far from being the components of a federation, the viceroyalties were designed to be cogs in a highly centralized structure. Viceroys were to be appointed by the emperor, and he alone had the right to summon, dissolve, postpone, or prolong sessions of the imperial and viceroyalty diets; the viceroyalty diets were defined as consisting “of the Sovereign [not the viceroy] and two chambers;” the upper chambers of both the viceroyalty and imperial diets were to be filled with members of the Senate, an institution of the central government appointed by the emperor; the lower houses of the viceroyalty diets were to be selected by the emperor from locally nominated individuals; the imperial diet’s lower chamber was to be filled with the emperor’s appointees from the lower houses of the viceroyalty diets; and legislation approved by both houses of any diet, regional or imperial, was to be countersigned by the central administration’s minister of justice and forwarded to the emperor, who had the right of absolute veto.^[10]
Unlike all the proposals mentioned above, M. M. Speranskii’s many memoranda and drafts of reforms between 1802 and 1809 were influenced by the enlightenment concepts he shared with A. N. Radishchev, his friend and colleague in the years 1799-1802. In an 1802 piece committed to the idea that “any legal government on earth must be founded on the general will of the nation (obshchaia volia naroda),” Speranskii argued the necessity for the state to have “fundamental laws (korennye zakony),” i.e., a “constitution (konstitutsiia),” in order to specify

“the conditions upon which the will of the nation has instituted the government…to signify more precisely what exactly the nation wishes,” and to limit “autocratic power…to a greater or lesser degree”.^[11]

Despite the reference to limiting autocratic power, Speranskii failed in his earliest projects “to specify any institutional forms for the manifestation of this general will….”^[12]
Like the Jacobins in France in the 1790s, Speranskii viewed the nation as a political community but had to take account of ethnic differences within it. Although he was always much more concerned with the population’s division into social estates and classes than into ethnic groups, in an 1803 memorandum he did note, with some ambivalence, the need to accommodate the presence of the latter:

“The unity of a plan of administration must not, however, stand in the way of local differences which necessarily exist in any state.
It would be strange to want nations that differ in way of life, in habits, and level of enlightenment and industry to submit with equal ease to a single form of administration.
There are, nevertheless, general rules in government on which its plan may conveniently be based in all times and places.
It is necessary that this plan in its main parts be simple and uniform for an entire country, but at the same time that it leave sufficient latitude for all the adaptations which detailed respect for differences may require.”

In a footnote, Speranskii amplified this idea and applied it to Russia. He divided

“all parts of a state into two types: the homogeneous ones, to which may be given a common and completely identical form, [and] the heterogeneous ones, in which the form should be adapted to local considerations. In Russia, following this rule, all the gubernii may be divided into internal and borderland ones, with the former understood as all those where justice is conducted according to the [1649] Code (Ulozhenie) and the latter signifying all those which enjoy different rights.”^[13]

Speranskii incorporated this approach to the borderlands in the introduction to his 1809 draft of a new code of laws. In it he divided Russia into gubernii and oblasti, defining the latter as “those parts of the empire which because of their size and population cannot enter into the general administrative order.” He took it for granted that there was no need to explain what traits differentiated the population of the oblasti from that of the gubernii. The oblasti were to be five in number: Siberia; the Caucasus, including Georgia, and the Astrakhan region; the Orenburg region; the Don Cossack lands; and New Russia. For the gubernii, Speranskii proposed a system of elective legislative and judicial institutions at the volost’, okrug, guberniia, and statewide levels – a system intended to give the nation, or rather its propertied classes, a somewhat greater voice in government than that envisioned a decade later by Novosil’tsev. For the borderland oblasti, however, Speranskii prescribed only an undefined “special structure, with the general state laws applied to them in accordance with their local situations.”^[14]
A dozen years later, Speranskii was sent as governor-general to Siberia with Alexander’s charge “to determine on the spot the most useful principles for the organization and administration of this remote region.” In the 1822 statutes creating governments-general for Western and Eastern Siberia, Speranskii devised the “special structure” he had in 1809 hinted at as necessary to accommodate legislation to local conditions in the borderlands. The reformed administrative structure took no direct notice of ethnic minorities per se; it divided the local population only into natural subjects (all who followed a sedentary life) and inorodtsy (wandering hunting-fishing folk, nomadic pastoralists, and those but recently settled in villages or towns) – with the intention that the inorodtsy would eventually make the transition to natural subjects, i.e., become russified.^[15] The eventual administrative integration of Siberia into the metropole and the gradual cultural assimilation of its native population into the Russian nation were the goals Speranskii established and St. Petersburg pursued to the collapse of the old regime.^[16]

THE NORTHERN SOCIETY

The constitutions drafted by N. M. Murav’ev for the Decembrists’ Northern Society and by P. I. Pestel’ for the Southern Society have traditionally been contrasted in terms of political form – a federal constitutional monarchy versus a unitary republic. No less important is the difference in their handling of the question of Russia’s multiethnicity. Murav’ev largely ignored it. He followed the example of the United States constitution and assumed that citizens’ different ethnic backgrounds would pose no significant difficulty for a political nation of legal equals. He did, however, stipulate the need for a common language, Russian. Pestel’s approach, on the contrary, was to face the problem directly. His constitution dealt at length with measures for the total assimilation of all other ethnicities by the Russian nation, with which he identified the state.
Commitment to popular sovereignty was more openly displayed in Murav’ev’s constitution, composed in 1821-1824, than in Speranskii’s 1809 project. Chapter one, articles 1 and 2 of both Murav’ev’s first and second drafts were literal translations of articles 2 and 3 of the 1812 Spanish constitution, the most liberal in Europe at the time.^[17] Murav’ev’s articles affirmed that

“The Russian nation, free and independent, is not, nor can it be, the property of any person or any family. The source of supreme authority is the nation, to which belongs the exclusive right to make fundamental statutes for itself.”^[18]

In these articles and in the preamble to his first draft, Murav’ev reflected also the influence of D. I. Fonvizin’s “Discourse on Essential State Laws,” a copy of which he received from his fellow Decembrist M. A. Fonvizin, the author’s nephew.^[19] In his “Discourse” Fonvizin had argued that “Wherever the arbitrary will of one person is the supreme law, there no firm common bond can exist; there is a state but no fatherland, subjects but no citizens, no body politic with its members united by mutual rights and duties.”^[20] Murav’ev began his preamble with a similar condemnation of autocracy:

“The experience of all nations and of all ages has demonstrated that autocratic power is equally ruinous for society and for its rulers; that it is consonant neither with the principles of our holy faith nor with the commands of sound reason. One cannot assume that the basis of government is the arbitrary will of one person; it is impossible to agree to all rights being placed on one side and all obligations on the other.”

Murav’ev’s constitution defined citizens of the empire as inhabitants who enjoyed the right “to elect officials or electors” and “to be themselves elected to any legislative, executive, or judicial public office,” and who met various qualifications, among them having “a known and permanent residence.”^[21] This condition effectively disqualified nomads, who, in fact, in a subsequent article were specifically excluded from citizenship: “Nomadic tribes do not have civil rights.”^[22] They were, however, granted the right to participate in the election of volost’ (township) elders.^[23] The volost’ was to be the subdivision of an uezd, as the latter was of a derzhava; the derzhavy were the states of the federal union Murav’ev envisioned. Twenty years after the promulgation of the constitution, literacy in Russian was to be added to the qualifications for citizenship^[24] – an implicit acknowledgement of the presence of ethnolinguistic diversity in the population and simultaneously a resolution of the problem this posed.
Apart from the issue of speakers of languages other than Russian, the constitution gave no recognition to ethnic diversity; its discrimination against nomads was based on their way of life, rather than their ethnicity, just as the United States constitution, Murav’ev’s model, discriminated against slaves on the basis of their legal status, not their race. And Murav’ev’s stipulation that the federal parliament, the Narodnoe veche, “has the authority neither to establish nor to prohibit any denomination or sect”^[25] removed from the state’s cognizance Russia’s religious diversity as well.
Murav’ev’s commitment to a federal system for Russia had nothing to do with the empire’s multiethnic nature and everything to do with its huge size.^[26] “Nations small in number,” he argued in the preamble to his first draft,

“are usually the prey of their neighbors – and do not enjoy independence. Large nations enjoy external independence – but usually suffer from internal oppression and become an instrument in the hands of a despot for the oppression and ruin of neighboring nations. The vastness of their lands, their numerous army prevent some from being free; those who lack these inconveniences are victimized by their powerlessness.”

Federalism alone could resolve this problem for a large nation like Russia, reconciling “the nation’s greatness and its citizens’ freedom” – with a legislature in the capital taking care of matters “common to the entire state” and “regional legislative assemblies” dealing with regional matters.
Disregarding Russia’s historic and ethnic divisions, with economic and commercial considerations uppermost in his mind, and following the example of the French in the early 1790s, Murav’ev divided his projected federation into fourteen derzhavy (states) and named them after geographic features – seas and rivers for the most part. In addition there were to be two oblasti, one for the federal capital district (Nizhnii Novgorod) and the other for the Don Cossack region. Of the non-Russian borderlands, Finland was included in the state of (the Gulf of) Bothnia, with St. Petersburg as its capital; the three Baltic gubernii were included in a Baltic state which extended farther inland, with Novgorod as its capital; Vil’na was capital of a Western state comprising Lithuania and White Russia; Bessarabia and Little and New Russia formed three derzhavy – those of the Black Sea, the (Southern) Bug (River), and Ukraine, with capitals, respectively, at Odessa, Kiev, and Khar’kov; the Caucasus constituted a single state under that name, with its capital at Tiflis; and Siberia was divided into the states of the Ob’ and the Lena, with capitals at Tobol’sk and Irkutsk. In his second draft, Murav’ev reduced the number of derzhavy to thirteen by 1) merging the state of the Bug in the enlarged state of the Black Sea, with Kiev as its capital; 2) transferring the federal capital to Moscow, abolishing the state of the Oka (River), and transforming at least part of it into the new capital district; and 3) carving a new state of the Volkhov (River), with St. Petersburg as its capital, from the southeastern uezdy of Bothnia and the eastern uezdy of the Baltic state. The remainder of Bothnia, with Helsingfors as its capital, now approximated Finland, and the remainder of the Baltic state, with its capital at Riga, approximated the three Baltic gubernii. These changes did not indicate greater consideration for the distinctiveness of the Finnish, Baltic, and southern borderlands; formation of regions united economically and commercially remained Murav’ev’s guiding principle. He mentioned Poland nowhere in either draft, evidently intending to leave intact for the present the kingdom’s personal union with Russia.^[27]
Following closely the model of the United States constitution, the federal legislature was to be bicameral. In its upper house (the Supreme Duma) each derzhava was to be represented by three delegates, the capital region by two, and the Don Cossack region by one – all elected for six-year terms, one third every two years. The lower chamber (House of People’s Representatives) was to be elected for a two-year term, one representative for every 50,000 male inhabitants, not counting nomads; authorities in each state were to redistrict constituencies after each decennial census.^[28]

THE SOUTHERN SOCIETY

A diametrically opposite approach was taken by P. I. Pestel’ in his Russkaia pravda,^[29] formally approved by the leaders of the Southern Society in 1823 and partially reworked by its author the following year. The document was intended as the “Constitutional Charter of the Great Russian Nation (Zapovednaia gosudarstvennaia gramota velikago naroda rossiiskago)” and also as the program for the new order in Russia to be established over a ten-year period by a Provisional Supreme Government. The Charter’s use of the eighteenth-century political definition of a nation as “an aggregate of all those persons who belong to one and the same state [and] constitute a civil society having as its goal the existence [and] the greatest possible prosperity of each and all [of its members]”^[30] would have evoked no disagreement from Murav’ev. In Russkaia pravda, however, Pestel’ abandoned his earlier belief in federalism – under the influence of Count Destutt de Tracy’s 1819 commentary on Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.^[31]
Using arguments that had been common in France in the 1790s, Destutt de Tracy claimed that a federation of weak states “always produces more strength, in truth, than absolute separation, but less than an intimate union and complete fusion.” Federalism was working in the United States because of the absence of “formidable neighbors,” but France in the 1790s was able to resist “all Europe” only because it remained “one and indivisible.”^[32] “One and indivisible” had been the phrase applied to the French kingdom in its 1791 constitution and to the republic in its 1793, 1795, and 1799 constitutions.^[33] The phrase was used initially in 1790 as an

“affirmation of the unity and homogeneity of all the country’s component parts…[and] expressed the disappearance of internal boundaries, the abolition of regional disparities…”^[34]

In 1795-1799 the same phrase was frequently used in the Netherlands, Switzerland (where a satellite republic was created on the French unitary model), and in Italy by nationalists whose aspirations were repeatedly disappointed under French rule.^[35]
Apart from the absence of threatening neighbors, Destutt de Tracy ignored another, probably more important, reason for federalism’s success in the United States. Except for the thirteen original states and Hawaii, the United States consists of congressionally created components having neither long previous histories as political entities nor, more importantly (and this includes all save Hawaii), majority populations with distinctive ethnic characters. Destutt de Tracy’s criticism of federalism would soon be echoed by Giuseppe Mazzini, who argued that Italy needed a unitary state:

“Because without unity, there is no real strength; and Italy surrounded as she is by powerful, united, and jealous nations, has need of strength before all things. Because federalism, by reducing her to the political impotence of Switzerland, would necessarily place her under the influence of one of the neighboring nations.”^[36]

As had the Jacobins before him, Destutt de Tracy recognized multiethnicity, and primarily multilingualism, as obstacles to a nation’s unity. Printing so facilitates and accelerates communication, he claimed,

“that it is no more difficult to govern a great province than a small one; and distance seems to me a very weak obstacle to the effective exercise of authority and of force, when necessary… But what is important is that the extent of a state not be such as to contain within itself peoples differing too much in manners, character, and, above all, language, and who may have too distinct particular interests.”^[37]

Destutt de Tracy’s influence is unmistakable in Russkaia pravda’s chapter one, section 1, “On the Territory of the State.” The section begins with the recognition that “The number of different races (plemena)…subject to the great Russian nation (rossiiskii narod) and annexed to its state is very great.” Pestel’ then posed the quandary faced by such a multiethnic state:

“If each state were to consist of only one race or nation, its borders would automatically be defined by the area on which this people were settled; but as almost all large states, and the more so Russia, encompass many different races, it becomes most difficult to define their boundaries. The difficulty arises from two opposing desires. Nations subject to a large state and descended not from the one that rules it, but from other races, always want for themselves independence and a separate political existence. ...On the other hand, any large state strives for the establishment of secure boundaries…and for the strength of the small nations surrounding it to augment its own strength and not that of any other neighboring large state.”

Pestel’ labeled this a conflict between the “right to nationhood (narodnost’)” of “subject races” and the right of a “ruling nation” to “comfort (blagoudobstvo,” based on its “right to security (bezopasnost’).” He resolved the conflict by arguing that the right to nationhood belongs only to those nations strong enough to preserve their political independence without the protection of a large neighbor,^[38] while the right to comfort justifies a state’s expansion – but only in quest of security, not to satisfy its vanity. Lacking the strength to defend their independence, small nations had better

“unite body and soul with a large state and merge their nationhood (narodnost’) completely with that of its ruling nation to form with the latter a single nation and stop dreaming uselessly of what can never be.”

In short, Pestel’s solution for Russia was total assimilation, resulting in the replacement of a state of nations by a nation-state.
Total assimilation, Russkaia pravda’s chapter one, section 2 insists, is the destiny of “Finland, Estland, Lifland, Kurland, White Russia, New Russia, Bessarabia, the Crimea, Georgia, the entire Caucasus, the lands of the Kirgiz [Kazakhs], all the Siberian peoples, and various other tribes of the state’s interior [who] have never enjoyed and can never enjoy independence… nor constitute separate states.” Poland posed a special problem. On the one hand, it had preserved its independence and great power status for many centuries. On the other, its recent partition at the hands of its neighbors was proof of its weakness. Even now, were the partitioned segments to be reunited, Poland could be a strong and independent state. Short of that unlikely event, Pestel’ proposed that Russia recognize the Poles’ right to nationhood and bestow independence on Congress Poland, but with the following restrictions: the Russo-Polish boundary must guarantee Russia’s right to security, the two countries must be bound in a “close alliance” in peace and war, with the armies of both states united in war, and Poland’s political and social structure must be “organized in the identical form as Russia’s.”
Section 2 also makes the case for Russia’s exercise of her right to the comforts of security by acquisitions of adjacent lands which “could never form separate states”: 1) Moldavia from the Prut River to the Carpathians; 2) the lands peopled by Caucasian mountaineers north of the border with Persia and Turkey, as well as the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea; 3) the lands of the Kirgiz-Kazakh nomadic hordes north of the plateau separating the Caspian and Aral seas; and 4) the part of Mongolia (actually Manchuria) lying north of the Amur River. Pestel’s rationale in the case of Moldavia was that its inhabitants were of the same race as those of Bessarabia, from whom they were currently divided, and that the Carpathians would give Russia a more easily defended boundary than the Prut. As for the Caucasian mountaineers, all attempts to turn them into peaceful neighbors had failed, which left but one means to pacify them and end eternal hostilities – complete subjugation; the occupation of the seacoast was necessary to cut off the mountaineers from their Turkish supporters and suppliers. Pestel’s justifications for Russia’s taking under her protection the Kazakh hordes were several: their potentially rich land could be turned into a source of natural resources and of profitable trade; what prevented this at present was the Kazakhs’ “unruliness and ignorance.” These same traits also deprived them of the capacity for independence; if organized along lines similar to the Don Cossacks, their homeland would enhance Russia’s security. Pestel’ described the left bank of the Amur as a political vacuum inhabited by nomads over whom China’s claim to rule was totally ineffective. Control of the area would “bring Russia great benefits and advantages for her trade and also for building a fleet on the Eastern [Pacific] Ocean.”
Section 4 of chapter one is entitled “Russia is a state one and indivisible (edinoe i nerazdelimoe)” – the first use in Russia of a phrase that would subsequently be appropriated by defenders of the status quo for whom Pestel’ the revolutionist was anathema but who advocated assimilationist policies similar to his.^[39] Pestel’ followed Destutt de Tracy in distinguishing between indivisible (i.e., unitary) and federal states and claiming “the decisive advantage of the indivisible organization of the state over the federal,” especially in the Russian case:

“With regard to Russia in particular, in order fully to be convinced of the degree to which a federal organization of the state would be ruinous for it, one has only to remember out of what heterogeneous parts this vast state is composed. Not only are its regions administered by diverse institutions, judged by diverse civil laws, but their inhabitants speak completely different languages, profess completely different faiths, are of different origins, and have belonged formerly to different states. If, therefore, this heterogeneity were to be strengthened still further by a federal organization of the state, one can easily foresee that these varied regions would then soon secede from Russia’s heartland (korennaia Rossiia), and she would then soon lose not only her might, greatness, and strength, but perhaps even her existence as a large or major state.”

Russia would in that case be subjected again to all the misfortunes she had suffered in the late Kievan and Mongol eras under the appanage system, “which was nothing but a kind of federal organization of the state.”
Pestel’s solution to the problem of Russia’s multiethnicity was not to assume it would disappear in the melting pot of common citizenship, as Murav’ev did, but to attack it head on with a broad-based policy of cultural russification, spelled out in Russkaia pravda’s chapter two, “On the races inhabiting Russia.” Apart from individual subjects of foreign states, section 1 of this chapter classifies Russia’s inhabitants as belonging either to “the native Russian nation (korennyi narod russkii),” a “Slavic race,” or to “the races annexed to Russia,” which “constitute various other races.” Section 2 prescribes that for the state to form a political whole, “all of its diverse parts and members” must be bound together by “the same laws and the same forms of government.” Uniform laws, moreover, being consonant with Christian moral precepts, would have an uplifting effect on Russia’s non-Christians, whose practices would be tolerated only to the extent that they were not “contrary to the spirit of Christian laws.” In chapter five, section 19, Pestel’ further narrowed the scope of religious toleration. Not only non-Christian religions but also Christian denominations other than Russian Orthodoxy, “the ruling faith of the great Russian state,” would be “permitted in Russia, provided they are not contrary to Russian spiritual and political laws, to rules of morality, and do not violate man’s natural obligations.”
Russkaia pravda’s chapter two, section 3, “On the variants of the native Russian nation,” insists that the “main difference” separating the Rossiiane of the Great Russian gubernii from the Malorossiiane (Little Russians) of Chernigov and Poltava; the Ukraintsy of Khar’kov and Kursk; the Russnaki (Ruthenians) of Kiev, Podolia, and Volynia; and the Belorustsy (White Russians) of Vitebsk and Mogilev is the distinctive laws and form of administration existing in the western gubernii. Once these are replaced by legal and administrative uniformity throughout the state, these “small variants” of the nation will be “merged in one common body.” Thereafter, “all the inhabitants” of the western region “are to be considered true Russians (istinnye Rossiiane) and are not to be distinguished from the latter by any special names.”
The basis for this unity already existed in language and religion, according to Pestel’. The same language prevailed throughout the nation; different dialects existed not only in the western but also in the Great Russian gubernii – as is true in all large nations. Orthodoxy likewise prevailed everywhere in the western region. Although Uniatism was still practiced in some localities, it was just “a weak remnant” of something imposed “by foreign coercion in unhappy times and is now gradually being eradicated.” The only Catholics were the descendants of Polish immigrants. Far from being an adjunct of Russia, the western gubernii were the “ancient property and cradle of the Russian state,” torn from it when it was weakened by “the intestine strife of the petty appanage princes.” Curiously, Russkaia pravda makes no reference to the variants of the Russian nation living in Galicia and Bukovina and separated from their brethren by the Austro-Russian frontier.
Not the “variants of the native Russian nation” in the western region, then, but the various “races annexed to Russia” posed the real obstacle to state unity. Pestel’ dealt with them at some length in sections 5 through 16 of Russkaia pravda’s second chapter. The establishment everywhere of uniform laws and administrative practices and of Russian as the prevalent language, leading eventually to the abolition of the very names of separate peoples – these were the general means to create a state “one and indivisible.”
In chapter two, section 5 Pestel’ pointed to the example of Old Finland, annexed in two stages in 1721 and 1743, where “Russian laws, administration, and language had been introduced, so that the nation living there in a short time became almost entirely russified (obrusel).” This “proved the ease with which Finland can be made a true part of Russia.” With the recent acquisition of the remainder of that country, however, “Old Finland was joined to new and both were granted laws and administration different from those of other Russian regions.” Returning to the successful policy of the eighteenth century, decisively rejecting any federal structure, and pursuing political uniformity, “the Supreme Government will introduce into all parts of Finland those laws and that form of administration being prepared for the Russian gubernii themselves. This new order will be more beneficial and agreeable to Finland not only than the present Russian one but also than the present one in Finland.” Through schooling and other means, the Russian language would be spread in the region.
Pestel’ pointed out, also in section 5, that despite their sharing the political (and legal) status of other Russian subjects, the sedentary Finnic peoples inhabiting northern Russia and especially Viatka and Perm gubernii, i.e., the Votyaks (today’s Udmurts), Cheremiss (today’s Mari), and Mordvins, “continue to stagnate in poverty and ignorance” because of the neglect of their actual condition and the “heavy oppression of the local authorities.” It would be “the particular duty of the Provisional Supreme Government to take all measures to deliver these races from the local yoke of their rulers, to furnish them the means to better their situation, and to introduce enlightenment among them.” Pestel’, it seems, was an early advocate of a type of affirmative action. Russkaia pravda treats the Finnic Lopari (today’s Lapps) and Ostyaks (today’s Khanty) together with other nomadic peoples in section 9.
Section 6 of chapter two recognizes that the condition of the indigenous Latvian population of Estland, Lifland, and Kurland (the Finnic Estonians, unaccountably, are not mentioned) is “much less prosperous than that even of Russian peasants, despite the sham freedom [from serfdom] granted the former.” The plight of the region’s natives is blamed on its medieval German conquerors, who had appropriated the land and its inhabitants.

“Consequently, the Provisional Supreme Government will be obligated 1) to pay serious attention both to their [the Latvians’] situation and to the fact that the feudal system, which raged for such a long time in western Europe, implanted its putrid roots even here, and 2) to take all measures for the complete and definitive eradication of feudalism’s remnants and for bringing the condition of the Latvians into accord with the fundamental rules which must serve as the basis for any good structuring of the state. To this end the present political organization of these gubernii has to be replaced by the new order to be introduced in the entire state.”

Parts of the homeland of the Latvians’ racial kin, the Lithuanians – Vil’na and Minsk gubernii – Russkaia pravda proposed to cede to the future Polish state. The remaining parts would undergo the same political-administrative changes as their neighbors, Vitebsk and Mogilev, with which they had some similarity.
According to section 7, the Moldavian race, inhabiting Russian Bessarabia and Ottoman Moldavia, would be united after the annexation of the latter.

“Both these parts of the Moldavian land must receive the same [political] organization as is proposed for all of Russia in general. All measures should be taken in order to give to these two regions the possibility to become completely russified (obruset’) and integral parts of one and the same whole, i.e. the Russian state.”

Two special regional administrations had been created in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for foreign colonists – mainly Germans, Bulgarians, and Wallachians in New Russia and Bessarabia and Germans in the Volga basin and North Caucasus. Section 8 stipulates their replacement by volosti (townships) of the general Russian type, and the future settlement of foreign colonists not in “new special volosti” but in “already existing Russian volosti in order that they may more easily and quickly become russified.” Pestel’ projected the volost’, a subdivision of the uezd, to be the lowest administrative unit of the new order and to include all Russian citizens on an equal basis. To promote the russification of existing foreign colonists, while observing punctiliously all temporary privileges promised to them, the Provisional Supreme Government must “pay assiduous attention to the introduction among them of the Russian language” and “grant them all the rights and privileges that the new civil order is to give to any Russian.”
Section 9 describes the territories roamed by nomads, whether pastoralists or hunting-gathering-fishing folk, as lacking precise limits and consequently serving as a constant source of quarrels and hostilities among these peoples, resulting in “endless war within the state.” Having no sense of property, they are given to “theft, robbery, deception of all kinds,” by which they inflict harm on each other. It would be the sacred duty of the Provisional Supreme Government to attend to these “semi-savage people, some of them even completely savage, who do not know their own good and exist in ignorance and degradation.” Here again Pestel’ turned to religion, and Orthodoxy in particular, as both a civilizing and a unifying force. To lift their nomadic neighbors out of their present “piteous condition,” a Christian duty for the Russians, they had to be turned into sedentary agriculturalists. The means of achieving this were several: 1) the delimitation of each group’s own pastures or hunting grounds, to be regarded as its volost’; 2) the sending of missionaries among them “to reveal to them the light of the Orthodox faith and the rays of true enlightenment,” thereby “little by little educating and pacifying these unfortunate nations;” and 3) the building in the most suitable locale in each volost’-like district of a storehouse for commodities needed by the population and in the same place granaries for use in time of crop failure, these locales to develop over time into settlements. The final step would be the application of uniform Russian administration to the volosti of the former nomads. Kirgiz-Kazakh nomads, however, were to be treated differently; they were to be transformed into a body like the Don Cossacks and renamed the Aral Cossacks. Gypsies were to be given the choice of either leaving Russia or converting to Orthodoxy and being dispersed throughout the state.
Section 10 of Russkaia pravda‘s second chapter divides the Tatar race into three variants: those of the Caucasus (i.e., the Azeri Turks, since most of the Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus were not yet subject to Russia), nomadic Tatars, and all the rest (i.e., the Volga and Crimean Tatars). The first two are treated respectively in section 11 on Caucasian peoples and section 9 on nomads. The Muslim faith of the Volga and Crimean Tatars should be tolerated, but no effort should be spared to convince them to accept baptism. Polygamy must be banned as contrary to Orthodoxy, and pressure should be brought to bear on Muslims to abandon the practice of keeping their women under lock and key – “a great injustice against this half of the human race.” Tatars, and Muslims in general, were to enjoy the same personal civil rights and obligations as Russians and live in volosti under the regulations common throughout the empire.
Russkaia pravda’s section 11 recognizes the religious, linguistic, cultural, and political diversity of the peoples of the Caucasus, whom it describes as having in common only their “predisposition to turbulence and robbery among themselves” and to “incessant intestine strife,” which ceases temporarily only when they unite to attack Russians. Their way of life “has endowed these peoples with remarkable courage and outstanding enterprise,” but has made them “as poor as they are unenlightened.” The Caucasus was “known from earliest times as a blessed region where all the products of nature could reward human labor with abundance and which once flourished in profusion.” Its possession by “semi-savage peoples,” however, has reduced it to its present “desolate condition,” in which “it brings no benefit to anyone.”
Russia could enjoy very active and profitable trade relations with Persia and Asia Minor via the Caucasus but is prevented from doing so “only by the fact that the peoples of the Caucasus are as dangerous and disturbing neighbors as they are unreliable and useless allies.” Since all efforts “to pacify these nations by gentle and friendly means” have failed utterly, Russia must subjugate all the peoples and lands north of a border to be agreed upon with Persia and Turkey, including the Black Sea coastal strip north of the Caucasus range currently belonging to Turkey. After the conquest, peaceful peoples would be left in place and given Russian forms of administration. Ungovernable peoples would be resettled in small groups in Russia’s interior and the lands confiscated from them given to Russian settlers, thereby “effacing from the Caucasus all signs of its former inhabitants and turning this region into a tranquil and well-organized Russian territory.”
Although Russkaia pravda does not specifically compare the sedentary peoples of northern Russia with those of eastern Siberia, it describes both groups as deserving to be lifted out of their poverty and ignorance. The means prescribed for the latter group in section 13 include increasing the role of grain cultivation over fishing in the local economy, disseminating and strengthening the Orthodox faith to soften the rude mores of the natives through education, and establishing volosti and administrative practices of the type to be introduced throughout Russia.
Section 14, the longest one in Russkaia pravda’s chapter two, deals with Russia’s Jews. Its length testifies to the seriousness of Pestel’s concern with – and his anger against – the numerous nation that was the biggest obstacle to his project for a Russia one and indivisible. The section describes Jews as an incredibly close-knit community always ready to act in their own narrow interest. Their religion “assures them that they are predestined to subdue and possess all other nations,” and consequently “separates them from all other nations, compels them to hold in contempt, so to speak, all other nations, and completely prohibits and makes impossible their merging with any other nation.” The barrier that cuts the Jews off from others is reinforced by their rabbis, who forbid “the reading of any books but the Talmud and some others of their own spiritual books,” thereby preventing popular prejudices from being undermined by enlightenment. The tight bond among themselves enables the Jews to amass large sums and to collect money for such common purposes as bribing the authorities to commit “all kinds of abuses for the Jews’ benefit.”
Although estranged from the Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians among whom they live, the Jews are accused in section 14 of preying upon their neighbors:

“While waiting for the Messiah, Jews consider themselves [only] temporary residents of the region where they are located and therefore avoid farming entirely, in part even disdain craftsmanship, and engage mostly in trade. There are too many of them to make an adequate living at honest trade; consequently there is no kind of deception or falsity they do not commit, which their rabbis promote even further by telling them it is no crime to deceive a Christian and …even to bear false witness if only it benefits a Jew.”

As a result of the Jews’ close-knit nature, “no sooner are they allowed into any locality than they inevitably monopolize [its trade] and drive out any competitors.” In the gubernii they inhabit, “[a]ll trade is in their hands and few are the peasants who are not in their power through indebtedness.”
To make matters worse, the government has in the past granted Jews such rights and privileges as exemption from military recruitment, the maintenance of ritual slaughterers, control over the education of their children, the publication of Jewish books, and the maintenance of courts presided over by rabbis – in addition to the rights enjoyed by Russia’s Christian nations. “All things considered,” the section concludes, “it may clearly be seen that in [our] state Jews constitute, so to say, their own entirely distinctive separate state and moreover now enjoy in Russia greater rights than do the Christians themselves.”
If the Jews are to remain in Russia, the existing situation, “which sanctions the Jews’ hostility to Christians and places them in a position opposed to the social order,” must be ended by the Provisional Supreme Government and the Jews subjected to the uniform system of government to be established throughout the state. Alternatively, the more than two million Russian and Polish Jews should be gathered together and provided with an armed escort to accompany them through European Turkey and across the Straits. In Asiatic Turkey they would seize “sufficient territory” for the establishment of a “distinctive Jewish state.” Given his lengthy exposition of the Jews’ unassimilable character, there is little doubt that Pestel’ preferred their forced departure for a home distant from Russia.
“[I]n all its measures regarding the various nations and races inhabiting Russia,” Pestel’ declared in section 16 of his second chapter, “the Provisional Supreme Administration must incessantly aim at making them into one single nation and dissolving all differences into one common mass, so that the inhabitants throughout the entire territory of the Russian state all be Russians.” Uniformity in language, laws, and political institutions would enable the abolition of names for the separate peoples currently existing in Russia. History, according to Pestel’, “has proven that nations are everywhere what their governments and their laws have made them.” A single Russian nation could thus be created by and for the unitary Russian state, transforming the latter into a Russian nation-state.