Аннотация: From Speransky to Kryzhanovsky. About "Memoirs" by Sergei Kryzhanovsky
From Speransky to Kryzhanovsky. About "Memoirs" by Sergei Kryzhanovsky. The literary and historical essay.
Sergei Efimovich Kryzhanovsky (1862-1935) half-jokingly - half-seriously considered himself the successor of Mikhail Speransky (1772-1839).
Sergei Efimovich, a native of the Kingdom of Poland (from clergy, from the Russial intelligentsia; according to some versions - from the Ukrainian Cossacks by origin), rose to the highest posts (close in level to the post of Minister of the Empire), and, as a result, became the Secretary of State - Technical chief of the State Council (the upper chamber of the pre-revolutionary Russial Parliament).
He personally knew Emperor Nicholas II and his wife, Sergei Witte, Peter Stolypin, many others ...
In 'Memoirs' (Memoirs: from the papers of Sergei Kryzhanovsky, the last state secretary of the Russian Empire / ... Text, introductory article, commentary: A. V. Likhomanov. - St. Petersburg, 2009.- 228 p. : illustrations.)[Воспоминания: из бумаг С. Е. Крыжановского, последнего государственного секретаря Российской империи / Подгот. текста, вступ. ст., коммент.: А. В. Лихоманов.- СПб.: РНБ, 2009.- 228 с: ил.] Sergei Kryzhanovsky noted that he did not know and did not want to know Rasputin and other representatives from this row. He was not familiar with them.
In the career of Sergei Kryzhanovsky was a period when he single-handedly and uncontrollably disposed of millions of funds allocated to support a figures loyal to the tsarist regime. Not a single mention of Kryzhanovsky's dishonesty or self-interest was followed.
By position, by his post, by occupation Sergei Kryzhanovsky was busy with the creation of the vast majority of basic documents relating to the creation of the State Duma and elections to it (with subsequent amendments).
For the initial draft Sergei Kryzhanovsky took a draft drawn up by Mikhail Speransky. "Trying to save the interconnection with a tradition and, if possible, to avoid reproach for copying from Western samples, I took as a model the draft of the State Duma, drawn up by Mikhail Speransky ...".
Sergei Kryzhanovsky had a broad outlook, the ability to write and understand many ongoing processes.
As one of top officials of the imperial bureaucracy, he could not help but notice the depravity of a number of foreign policy traditions originating in the section of the Rzeczpospolita (the Commonwealth) (1775) (Russia's reputation as the 'gendarme of Europe' was a 'pleasant' and 'useful' addition to the consequences of this section).
To some extent Sergei Kryzhanovsky noticed the tradition of defeats that appeared in Russia after the unsuccessful Decembrist uprising in 1825 (... 1856 .... - ... 1878 ... - ... 1905 ...).
Sergei Kryzhanovsky saw a problems of personnel support and a problems of a political system (a layer of nobility was more and more poor, but remained in power, and a class of entrepreneurs were more and more rich, but not allowed to power).
Understood Sergei Kryzhanovsky and the existence of the agrarian question associated with the requirements of a "fair" distribution of land.
There are in the memoirs Sergei Kryzhanovsky and such a phrase: "Unfortunately, ...the indigenous Russia did not have a supply of cultural and moral forces that could serve as an instrument ... for assimilation ...".
All these problems Sergei Kryzhanovsky noticed, but the united picture in his mind they did not form .
He was fascinated by the bureaucratic and military power of the Empire.
Life in the Empire itself was quite pleasant for a capable, educated person, one of the highest officials.
All the disappointments of Kryzhanovsky were caused the fact that the bureaucratic and military machines of the Russian Empire were not reorganized and properly improved, and could not withstand the pressure in February-March 1917.
As for the State Duma, and in general, parliamentarism, the attitude of Sergei Kryzhanovsky to them was dual.
On the one hand, parliamentarism is a natural phenomenon.
On the other hand, in Russia the 'lower layers' of the population for parliamentarism weren't ready.
Unnoticed by Sergei Kryzhanovsky, when talking about the First State Duma, slides to the genre of political fairy tales created by the imperial bureaucracy at sunset of the Empire:
A political fairy tales were needed to lower the level of a political cynicism. ('... someone called the scheme' shameless 'because the main tendency was too clearly, too distinctly to let all the elections pass through the filter of a large property [a high property value filter]. When Stolypin reported the case to the sovereign and, laughing, mentioned this definition, the sovereign smiled , said: "I, too, for shameless.").
Political fairy tales were switching the attention:
'Members of the Duma - peasants, - they drunk in taverns and scandalized, referring [appelating] ... to their immunity ... A large demonstrations were held at the funeral of a Duma member (I forgot his surname). This Duma member died ... due to drunkenness; in grave speeches he was called "a fighter who fell [died] at a glorious post."
A sentences from a volost and the other courts began to come in connection of behavior of some members of the Duma. They were convicted of petty theft and fraud: one for stealing a pig, the other for [stealing] a wallet, etc. In general, the quantity of members of the First Duma, mainly peasants, the members, who, thanks to the careless compilation of lists of voters and electors, members, who were previously convicted of a acquisitive crime that deprived them of [a right of] participation in the elections, or [convicted] subsequently during the first year after the dissolution of the Duma, exceeded, according to the information collected by the Ministry of the Interior, a forty a person, that is, [exceeded] about eight percent of the total composition of the Duma. '
(... "During the first year of the dissolution of the Duma...")
Fairy tales - are a fairy tales. But if we go away from the details, so there was no desire to redistribute power, land, money ... There were no effective projects of the future. 'They will take! And then, later what will be !? '.
If we consider the peasant composition of the First State Duma as a bitter medicine for the Russian Empire, then the Empire did not intend to, did not want to take this medicine.
Some signs showed that even if the Empire took this medicine, then perhaps this organism would not be able to digest (to acquire, to learn) a such a medicine.
S.E. Kryzhanovsky could not (logically) understand the difficulties (the impossibility?) of a healing the Empire. He had great hopes for the bureaucratic and military power of the Empire.
But intuitively, he felt the difficulty (the impossibility?) of a healing. 'And some vague forebodings, a kind of longing, gripped the heart. Something seemed to crack in our lives and crawl like an avalanche. A some kind of unclear, of an alien force was coming [was attacking]. And involuntarily came to mind: "the Holy Rus', forgive me and us ...".
A contemporary of Sergei Efimovich Kryzhanovsky, a man with a similar surname, Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovsky (1872 - 1959), acted in the conditions of a separation of functions. As we wrote in the work 'Pilsudski and Krzhizhanovsky. Five comments in connection with the reading of Gennady Matveev's book 'Pilsudski' ', he was engaged in medium-term and long-term economic planning. Dzerzhinsky ensured the interrelation between the administrative and economic apparatus. And comrade Stalin was deciding on political issues. The Soviet parliament did not bother Gleb Maksimilianovich ...
Perhaps Comrade Stalin took into account the experience of relations of the Russian imperial bureaucracy with the First State Duma and the experience of relations of the Prussian imperial bureaucracy (Otto Bismarck) with the Prussian parliament. - The victory in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 reconciled (temporarily - until 1918) Germany (Prussia) with the regime of the empire.
March 18, 2020 10:42
Translation from Russian into English: March 19, 2020 09:02.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'От Сперанского к Крыжановскому. О "Воспоминаниях" С.Е. Крыжановского. Литературно-исторический очерк'.