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 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.[11]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.[12]
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'.[13]
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: another example was the establishment of the police trade unions, the remnants of which led the march to the Winter Palace on Bloody Sunday.
The last emperor was infamous for his suspicion of his ministers. During a meeting over foreignpolicy in the Far East, Minister ofWar Aleksei Kuropatkin, worried by Nicholas's tendency to listen to the counsel of unofficial advisors, complained that, '(your) confidence in me would only grow when I ceased to be a minister'. Nicholas responded, 'It is strange, you know, but perhaps that is psychologically correct.'[14] To do Nicholas justice, this was not a unique situation. Louis XV, frustrated by his foreign minister's failure to share his enthusiasm for Poland and Sweden, conducted a secret policy with these two countries, whilst George II of England sent secret agents to negotiate with Saxony and Austria in contradiction with his own government's policy.
Post 1905
As a result of the revolution of 1905 Russia became a semi-constitutional monarchy. The now half-elected State Council became the upper house of the parliamentary system. The Duma made up the lower house.[15]
The major change in the central governing organs was the prominence given to the Council of Ministers as the focal point of the administration and, more importantly, the emergence of the council's chairman. This figure held the responsibility of co-ordinating policy-making and ministerial activity and ensuring unity in the council. Many figures inside and outside of government came to the conclusion that the causes of the disasters of 1904-6 could be linked to the chaos and disunity of the subordinate organs resulting from faulty supreme organs. Particular blame was placed on Nicholas II who came to be regarded as unable to play the co-ordinating role demanded by the autocratic system. This drive for ministerial unity under the leadership of the chairman ofthe Council of Ministers predictably raised sensitivities concerning infringement on the emperor's real power and role. Nicholas II summed up his feeling in a telling comment. 'He (Peter A. Stolypin, chairman of the Council of Ministers, 1906-1911) dies in my service, true, but he was always so anxious to keep me in the background. Do you suppose that I liked always reading in the papers that the chairman of the council of ministers had done this . . . The chairman had done that? Don't I count? Am I nobody?'[16] For the rest of his reign Nicholas worked towards the emasculation of the chairman's power, which he considered a direct threat to his authority. However, he himself was unable to co-ordinate his government or provide astute political leadership - with disastrous consequences.
Nicholas's undermining of his own government was owed above all to his personality, though also to his conception ofhis role as patriarch ofhis people, and to the suspicion and contempt of bureaucracy widespread in Russian society.[17] Even Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, let alone Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria never undermined their chief ministers to the degree Nicholas sabotaged Stolypin and after him, Vladimir Kokovtsev. More importantly, the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchs did not see a fundamental difference between themselves and the policies followed by their governments.[18]Nicholas, however, regarded the Council of Ministers and the bureaucracy as direct threats to his power and worked to undermine them, which lead to paralysis of the central governing organs in the years before and during the First World War.
11
J. Spence,
12
J. Dull, 'The Evolution of Government in China', in P. Ropp (ed.),
15
R. McKean,
17
See e.g. R. Wortman,
18
The literature on Wilhelm is immense; for guidance see C. Clark,