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Higher Civil Servants in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs: Some Demographic and Career Characteristics, 1905-1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Don Karl Rowney
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One of those organs of tsarist government that apparently broadened its responsibilities and competencies during the nineteenth century was the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). At the turn of the century the Ministry's authority extended over political and civil police, local agrarian affairs, licensing of physicians and veterinarians, gathering of statistical data for the empire (including censuses), postal and telegraphic services, press licensing and censorship, civil engineering, as well as other, equally diverse, areas. The publicly announced rationale for this vast range of competencies was that these functions all were directly related to the public welfare. As a government document written for Western consumption in the 1890s put it, the Ministry was “allotted the very extensive task of caring for the universal welfare of the people, the peace, quiet, and good order of the whole Empire.”

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 101 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1972

References

1. (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del). Numerous works are available which deal with the structurẹ and operation of the tsarist bureaucracy in the early twentieth century. Citations to most of these are found in Amburger, Erik, Geschichte der Behordenorganisation Russlands von Peter dem Grossen bis 1917 (Leiden, 1966)Google Scholar; Eroshkin, N. P., Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii, 2nd rev. ed. (Moscow, 1968)Google Scholar; and my “Study of the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Light of Organization Theory” in Kanet, Roger E., ed., The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies (New York, 1971), pp. 209–31 Google Scholar. Works that deal centrally with the MVD are somewhat rarer. Useful ones include Dashkevich, Leonid, Nashe Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (Berlin, 1895)Google Scholar; Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del: Istoricheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg, 1901); the memoirs of the former high MVD official, Gurko, V. I., Features and Figures of the Past: Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II (Stanford, 1939)Google Scholar; and the bibliography by Smith, Edward Ellis and Lednicky, Rudolf, “The Okhrana”: The Russian Department of Police (Stanford, 1967).Google Scholar

2. The Statesman’s Handbook for Russia, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1896), 1: 397.

3. Spisok vysshikh chinov tsentral’nykh ustanovlenii Ministerstva Vnutrennikh Del, part 1 (St. Petersburg, 1905, 1914, and 1916). For 1914 and 1916 specific dates are given—May 7 and October 10 respectively.

4. It is perhaps unnecessary to note that this selection of “events” in the society at large is done arbitrarily and merely to place the MVD data in its most obvious context. Any attempt to explain variance in the data by reference to these events alone risks a great deal.

5. No one from the groups we are concerned with held the highest rank of kantsler. The relevant ranks are 2 through 5: deistvitel’nyi tainyi sovetnik, tainyi sovetnik, deistvitel’nyi statskii sovetnik, and statskii sovetnik. For further explanation see L. M. Rogovin, comp., Ustav o sluzhbe (Petrograd, 1915) especially part 2, pp. 119-215.

6. Part 2 of the Spisok vysshikh chinov typically dealt with provincial incumbents. Different editions were designed to serve different purposes. Cf., for example, Spisok lits sluzhashchikh po vedomstvu Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del, which includes lower ranks

7. In particular, Johnson, William H. E., Russia’s Educational Heritage (Pittsburgh, 1950; reprint, New York, 1969), chaps. 5 and, especially, 8 Google Scholar. See also tables 32 and 33 in the same work.

8. For a more extensive discussion see Lazarevsky, N. D., “Soslovie,” in Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar' (St. Petersburg, 1900), 30: 911-13.Google Scholar

9. Taken indiscriminately, of course, the attribute of landholding is not a reliable index of “financial independence.” Intervening circumstances such as indebtedness, the market or productive value of the landholding, and the amount of land were important.

10. The percentage variances in table 2—as well as in the other tables—must be interpreted with care, since in some instances they involve very few people.

11. See, for example, the introductory material in Ves' Peterburg na 1904 god: Adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga g. S.-Peterburga (St. Petersburg, 1904).

12. Again, it should be noted that large percentage variances reflect only a small variation in numbers of officials.

13. Pintner, Walter M., “The Social Characteristics of the Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Bureaucracy,” Slavic Review, 29, no. 3 (September 1970): 429-43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially table 9 and pp. 436 ff.

14. The role of education in “modernizing” the values and technical competence of the higher civil servants is probably paramount here. Additional research on the content of higher formal education and the specific processes whereby individuals were “selected into” the educational system and thence into the bureaucracy seems essential.