Governmental Constitutionalism in the Early 19th Century

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of «governmental constitutionalism» in the Russian Empire during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, namely: projects of state transformation initiated by the supreme authority. The central objects of the study are the constitutional drafts prepared at the direction of Emperor Alexander I: M.M. Speransky’s plan, Introduction to the Code of State Laws (1809), and N.N. Novosiltsev’s Draft, State Charter of the Russian Empire (1820). The paper examines the common fundamental features of the initiatives under consideration, including the aspiration to modernize governance through the creation of representative institutions (the State Duma and local Dumas, the State Sejm), the introduction of the principle of separation of powers, the grant to the population of basic civil rights and liberties, and a program for the gradual abolition of serfdom. Particular emphasis is placed on the key condition underlying all of these reforms — the inviolable preservation of the supremacy of the monarch’s autocratic power — that defines the essence of «governmental» constitutionalism as reform from above. The authors explain the complex of causes that led to the nonimplementation of the projects, including resistance from conservative circles of the aristocracy, apprehensions prompted by revolutionary events in Europe, and Alexander I’s personal indecisiveness. Although this topic is a traditional one in legal-historical scholarship, the paper underscores the enduring significance of these projects. They constitute an important milestone in the development of Russian political and legal thought, demonstrating that within the framework of official ideology there existed an alternative path for the evolution of the state order through the legal limitation of absolutism and the creation of the foundations of civil society, thereby permitting a deeper understanding of both the potential possibilities and the actual limits of imperial reform in the nineteenth century.

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