In search of true monarchy: Montesquieu, Speranskii, Karamzin and the politics of reform in early nineteenth-century Russia

From the early eighteenth century, Russian autocracy derived its legitimacy in part from the policy of enlightened reform in accordance with the principles of Western political theory. An increasing engagement of the representatives of the Russian elites with the same notions towards the beginning of the nineteenth century led them to formulate critiques of Russia's recent historical development and its contemporary political system. This article examines how the reformer Mikhail Speranskii used Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws in order to advocate constitutional limitations on autocracy, while the official historiographer Nikolai Karamzin used the same source in order to demonstrate the inapplicability of constitutionalism for the Russian case. Correlation between civic and political liberty, the definition of the monarchy and nobility as well as the right principles of legislation constitute the basic dimensions of a comparison that reveals a greater difference between the two authors than hitherto assumed. It also reveals Speranskii's commitment to the ideal of constitutional monarchy that puts into question the earlier view of him as the statesman who sought to achieve the ideal of Rechtsstaat through rationalized bureaucratic absolutism.