Introduction: Russian Officialdom since 1881

Abstract

This book is about the civil agents, or officialdom, of three states: the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The study begins with the reign of Emperor Alexander III (1881—94), who succeeded his assassinated father at a moment of new departures for Russian state administration. As we shall see, the increasing size of state service, combined with the demand for state oversight of an increasingly industrialized political economy, requirements for new administrative specializations, and attempts to retrieve state administration from the liberalizing turns of the previous reign, all combined to create an officialdom which struggled to adapt to a changing imperium in a changing world.