ABSTRACT

State administrative reform after the first levy of peace arbitrators is a story of retrenchment and retreat, requiring careful sleight of hand. It was time for the state to gather its winnings, so to speak, and walk away from the gaming table. The trick was to neutralize the most dangerous principles behind the institution of peace arbitrator-and the expansion of these principles by the public-without seeming to renege on the state’s commitment to rural selfadministration. The incidents in Tver' and in the Polish provinces, along with the constant stream of landowner complaints on the peasant bias of the arbitrators, provided the perfect pretext. Valuev could now openly broach the subject of eliminating the institution, where previously his requests to administratively control the arbitrators had fallen on deaf ears. The law, it may be recalled, allowed for the administrative removal of an arbitrator only if his precinct was eliminated; the latter could be done only “if necessary” (art. 3). Thus Valuev, together with the landowners of several provinces, lit upon the idea of finding a way in which such eliminations might indeed be rendered necessary. Since 1861 the landowners had been devising projects to reduce the

number of precincts in the province. Valuev repeatedly insisted on the illegality of this move, since the motives behind it were apparent: the removal of one or several arbitrators who opposed the local landowners. As the governor of Orel put it, there “was not so much a real need to reduce the precincts as the wish to be rid of certain known individuals.”1 The governors of Smolensk and Iaroslavl' saw similarly personal motives behind the assemblies’ requests to eliminate precincts. Valuev, still smarting from the Main Committee’s refusal to bring the arbitrators within the jurisdiction of the Ministry, denied all of the proposals, instructing the assemblies that such reductions could take place only “by means of resignation of the arbitrator currently in service.”2 Thus the landowners sought alternative means by which the arbitrators could be compelled to “voluntarily” resign. Once it became clear that the peace arbitrators could not be controlled by

administrative means, Valuev changed direction and decided to approach the tsar with a request to reduce the number of arbitrator precincts. Unlike the landowners, however, Valuev took care to show that the reduction was

necessary on economic grounds. According to Valuev’s argument, the Main Committee had originally projected that 1,210 arbitrators would be needed to implement the emancipation, at a cost of about 3 million rubles. But the noble assemblies in fact created 1,700 precincts, costing over 4 million rubles and hence resulting in an overdraft of some million or more rubles. The extra expense was now unnecessary, Valuev pointed out, since most of the land charters were already in effect and a solid number of estates were ready to move on to redemption. The elimination of unnecessary precincts did not impinge on the arbitrators’ administrative independence, since

irrevocability negates the right of administrative authority to replace one person with another at its discretion, but it doesn’t negate the right of the legislative authority to abolish the position itself when its assignment is complete and there is no longer a real need for it.3