Government

Autocrat and autocracy

Whatever the extent to which the subordinate organs improved in the imperial era, if the supreme organs failed to regulate the relationship between the highest members of the bureaucracy and to provide the means for relative unity in both policy-making and execution at the very top, governmental paralysis and disaster could ensue. Central to the issue of the supreme organs was the monarch, who appointed the highest members of the state apparatus and was ultimately responsible for co-ordinating and directing their actions. The importance of this role increased in the absence of a first minister. The monarch’s modus operandi, views and opinions until the collapse of the Romanov state clearly exercised a vital impact on the subordinate and supreme organs’ everyday operation and on the state’s ability to act and react to the changing environment in which it found itself. Several years before the revolution of 1905 Witte summed up the situation for Nicholas II. ‘These questions [i.e. key strategic issues – Z.S.] can only be properly solved if you yourself take the lead in the matter, surrounding yourself with people chosen for the job. . . . The bureaucracy itself cannot solve such matters on its own.’14

Autocracy was the form of government in Russia until 1905 when in theory a semi-constitutional monarchy was established. The official conception of the autocracy stressed that all political power and legitimacy emanated from the autocrat, who claimed to be God’s representative on earth and responsible to Him alone. The autocracy was seen as uniquely Russian and the historical source of her greatness, indeed the only institution capable of mobilising and directing Russia’s resources and of ensuring the empire’s unity and modernisation. Therefore it was said that any diminution of its power, in theory or in practice, would have negative consequences for the future of Russia. The idea of union between the people and the autocratic tsar with strong paternalistic overtones constituted the base of the autocracy’s ideology. Whilst carrying the title of emperor the tsar was also known as the ‘little father’ who according to apologists for the autocracy acted as the arbiter between the various selfinterested groups in society, preventing exploitation and guaranteeing supreme truth and justice. The vast and relatively quick expansion of the bureaucracy in the nineteenth century made the emperors suspicious of its growing power and potential to infringe on the exercise of autocratic power. One result was a longing for a time when the tsar supposedly ruled his domains directly and maintained contact with his people. Consequently the monarch began to be portrayed as the defender of the people from his own bureaucracy. Nicholas

14 Quoted in D. Lieven, Nicholas II (London: John Murray, 1993), p. 84.

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II took on this view to a much greater extent than any of his predecessors, which resulted in a behaviour that only created greater chaos in the central governing organs at a time of growing social and political problems.

The emperors and supporters of the autocratic principle understood that the growth of the bureaucracy, and specifically the functional specialisation and impersonalisation of government that accompanied it, was slowly and seemingly irreversibly eroding the practical extent to which the autocrat could exercise his power. At the same time the emperors recognised the need to instil order into the expanding system in order to improve co-ordination of governmental organs and policy-making and establish a form of legality and predictability. Their goal remained that the autocrat was to create laws and establish institutions which were to operate within the law whilst he would remain above the law, implementing absolute justice. Yet the systemisation of the governing organs eroded further the practical exercise of autocratic authority. Therefore the emperors whilst on the one hand attempting to introduce order into the system, at the same time undermined their own supreme organs, seeing in them a potential threat to their power. They established ad hoc committees or commissions to draw up decrees, supervise the execution of policy, or oversee the government of a territory. Alexander III’s remark that he despised the administration and drank champagne to its destruction succinctly describes how Russia’s emperors felt about the bureaucratic machine.

Even Alexander III, the embodiment of paternalist autocrat, clearly understood, however, that he could not govern without the bureaucracy. Even an intelligent and active monarch could not hope to govern the realm without the guidance, knowledge and administrative help of ministers. Ideally decisions were to be made within the supreme organs through the gathering of information and deliberation and analysis by experts. The reality of government then as always differed. Institutional and personal rivalries abounded, opinions differed sharply among ministers and top officials as regards both strategy and tactics. Of course, people seldom reach the top in politics without powerful egos and aggressive and ambitious personalities. The chief executive officer of any regime must ensure that such egos and squabbles do not paralyse the state’s capacity to act and react. No Russian minister could formulate or execute any major policy without the explicit support of the monarch, who was therefore essentially the chief executive.

A successful minister had to retain the monarch’s favour and consequently fortify and expand his power and influence with him by limiting the influence of, or discrediting fellow ministers. Consequently, a monarch could end up with a group of men who, rather than striving for a unified government,

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engaged in factional fighting and policy sabotage. This situation is attributable also to the absence of collective responsibility or of a common institutional or ideological loyalty (e.g. to a political party) amongst the ministers to balance departmental and personal conflicts. In the end most monarchs realised that a great degree of ministerial unity was needed if the government was to accomplish anything. That is particularly true as the bureaucratic apparatus grew in scale and specialisation and society became more complex.

However, one key question was who would fulfil the role of the coordinating centre? There was no reason in principle why a monarch himself could not fulfil the role of a first minister, engendering unity and co-ordinating the state’s servants at the highest level. Louis XIV of France, Alexander III of Russia and Joseph II of Austria all governed in this way.15 But to act as lifetime chief executive officer and bear the burdens of head of state could easily break a twentieth-century monarch given the sheer complexity and scale of a modern government’s activity. Alternatively, if the monarch recognised his unwillingness or inability to fulfil this role he could throw the full weight of the monarchy’s power behind a chief minister. This would be done to ensure governmental unity in the absence of an active monarch. The relationships between Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, Wilhelm I of Prussia/Germany and Otto von Bismarck, Alexander I and Count A. A. Arakcheev and Empress Maria-Teresa of Austria and Kaunitz are examples of this situation. Russian emperors could in extraordinary circumstances decide to appoint, perhaps temporarily, a Richelieu. Despite the growing size of the tsarist bureaucracy there was no reason one figure could not macro-manage it.16 To entrust the job to a man who could be dismissed if too unpopular and who was not burdened with the job of chief executive officer for life made good sense. If, however, the monarch for any reason could not fulfil this co-ordinating role and refused to allow a capable first minister to do so, a hole in the centre of government emerged, fatally weakening its ability to act and react.

Russian emperors feared that a unified ministry would lead to ‘ministerial despotism’, whereby ministers would either limit the flow of information to the monarch or present a unified front on various policy decisions with the aim of obtaining imperial consent. Ministers did in fact have the opportunity to block both the flow of information to the monarch and the execution of policy since it was they who controlled to a great extent what the emperor did

15T. C. W. Blanning, Joseph II (London: Longman, 1994); R. Hatton, Louis XIV and Absolutism (London: Macmillan, 1976); M. Deon (ed.), Louis XIV par lui-memeˆ. (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).

16Yaney, Systematization of Russian Government, p. 307.

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and did not see. Therefore the emperors adopted a form of divide and rule in a bid to protect monarchical power and the monarch’s room for manoeuvre.

These were not problems or expedients unique to the Russian monarchy. A monarch’s problems became more acute with the growth of the bureaucratic machinery of state. Not surprisingly, Imperial China, the first polity to develop a large and sophisticated bureaucracy, also provided some of the earliest and most spectacular examples of a monarch’s efforts to struggle against bureaucratic encroachment on royal power. The Ming Emperor Wanli (1572–1620), disgusted with bureaucratic infighting, inertia and intransigence withdrew from governing altogether, refusing for years to meet with his top bureaucrats.17 The first Ming emperor, T’ai-tsu, deeply suspicious of high-level bureaucrats, ‘fractured bureaucratic institutions’ in order to exercise real control and enable greater flow of information to himself. When his successors proved less competent or willing chief executives than the dynasty’s founder this contributed greatly to the Ming regime’s collapse.18

A more modern example of the chief executive’s dilemma is provided by President Richard Nixon’s building up of the National Security Council in order to make certain that various viewpoints could be heard and debated at the top, and clear policy choices thereby presented to him. Nixon wanted all differences of view to be ‘identified and defended, rather than muted or buried’. Nixon stated that he did not want ‘to be confronted with a bureaucratic consensus that leaves me no option but acceptance or rejection, and that gives me no way of knowing what alternatives exist’.19

The Russian emperors’ response to the chief executive’s dilemma was use of courtiers, unofficial advisers, or officials from outside the ‘responsible’ ministry’s line-of-command to the great chagrin of their ministers. At times these figures constituted a useful alternative source of information and opinion. However, even when this was true, the co-ordination and consistency/execution of policy once a decision had been made had to be ensured, which often failed to happen under Nicholas II. Sometimes Nicholas would use such people to implement a policy which for some reason or another was not being followed by the responsible ministry. This happened as regards foreign policy in the Far East, with the Russo-Japanese War as its consequence:

17J. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990), p. 16. See also R. Huang, 1 5 87 . A Year of No Significance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

18J. Dull, ‘The Evolution of Government in China’, in P. Ropp (ed.), The Heritage of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). On Ming government see above all C. Hucker, ‘Ming government’, in D. Twitchett and F. Mote (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. VIII, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

19Quoted in J. McGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 412–13.

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