Administering Exile: Malfeasance, Corruption, and Failure

Abstract

The financial constraints imposed upon the exile system were as detrimental to it as the surge in exiles’ numbers. Despite his support for certain measures, Nicholas I was little interested in perpetuating Alexander I’s reform agenda (though Alexander had been inconsistent toward it as well). Yet, even had he stood behind M. M. Speranskii’s exile regulations little would have changed because of the structural problems conditioning Russian penality and Siberia’s administrative apparatus. This did not stop officials in both Petersburg and Siberia from presenting plans to retool the exile system and from trying to impress upon the emperor just how bad conditions really were. The Imperial Chancery and key ministers responded with directives and proposals revealing their almost willful ignorance of the true state of affairs.