Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: old problems, new principles – tsarist government and the Great Reforms
- 2 The birth of a new rural order: the state and local self-government, 1861–75
- 3 The breakdown of tsarist administrative order, 1875–81
- 4 The debate revived: state, social change, and ideologies of local self-government reform, 1881–5
- 5 State control over local initiative: the Land Captain Statute of 1889
- 6 The politics of the zemstvo counterreform, 1888–90
- 7 Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
5 - State control over local initiative: the Land Captain Statute of 1889
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: old problems, new principles – tsarist government and the Great Reforms
- 2 The birth of a new rural order: the state and local self-government, 1861–75
- 3 The breakdown of tsarist administrative order, 1875–81
- 4 The debate revived: state, social change, and ideologies of local self-government reform, 1881–5
- 5 State control over local initiative: the Land Captain Statute of 1889
- 6 The politics of the zemstvo counterreform, 1888–90
- 7 Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
During the years of the Kakhanov Commission's activity, the reform of local self-government was not the primary concern of top officials. Ministers and members of the State Council, as we have seen, were more preoccupied with the debate over the university counterreform and the power struggle in ministerial circles over the direction of the judicial counterreforms. But from 1886 to 1890, local self-government reform, particularly the establishment of Tolstoi's land captains (zemskie nachal'niki), constituted the most significant and controversial issue in government circles. This was the issue on which Tolstoi sought to overcome bureaucratic inertia and establish his control over the government. Although Governor V. M. Golitsyn of Moscow doubtlessly exaggerated in calling the Land Captain Statute “no less significant and extensive than the peasant reform” of 1861, contemporary officials of diverse views readily acknowledged that it was the legislative benchmark of Alexander III's reign and the cornerstone in Tolstoi's centralization policy, which was designed to create autocratic order by his control of the countryside.
The debates in ministerial circles in 1886–9 revealed that nearly all officials recognized the need for personal supervision of peasant self-government and agreed that continued anarchy in village administration could bring the collapse of the imperial regime itself. Yet Tolstoi's land captains project, which proposed to create effective rural administration and order by providing state supervision, evoked a torrent of criticism from various ministers and State Council members for almost three years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Russian Officialdom in CrisisAutocracy and Local Self-Government, 1861–1900, pp. 164 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989