The Tsar's Viceroys

Wrestling with a would-be assassin, inspecting the toilets in a rural prison, responding to a challenge from his mistress's enraged husband—all these matters could be part of a Russian provincial governor's day. More often, he was entangled in administrative routine, troubled by a steady flow of orders from St. Petersburg, and tormented by complaints from local powerbrokers. What was His Excellency—the tsar's viceroy—a bureaucratic flunky or a harassed politician?

Drawing on a broad range of materials in Soviet and Western archives, Richard Robbins here gives us a richly textured portrait of the Russian provincial governors in the last years of the old regime. He focuses on the governors as people and working officials, emphasizing their relations with government bureaucrats, representatives of the privileged classes, peasants, and proletarians.

Robbins uses anecdotal evidence to good effect in drawing a vivid picture of provincial life at the turn of the century. He persuades us that the popular image, etched by Gogol and Dostoyevsky, of the governor as incompetent and corrupt, is in need of revision. With convincing detail, he demonstrates that the viceroys of the late imperial period were increasingly professional, and some of them proved to be remarkably skilled politicians.