Russia’s Imperial Bureaucracy and the Problem of Forming New Managerial Ethos on the Eve of the Great Reforms

Abstract

The author examines the problem of forming new foundations of the managerial ethos in the Rus-sian Empire in the first years of the reign of Alexander II. As an example, there is analyzed the Note of legal adviser of the Naval Ministry V.E. Wrangel, as well as the opinions of high-ranking officials on it. The purpose of the research is to establish the foundations of new ethical standards that the authorities intended to apply to officials. The article shows an important aspect of the problem of reforming the administrative apparatus - the change in the moral character of senior officials, most of whom were never classified by either contemporaries or researchers as the so-called enlightened bureaucracy. There are also identified new ethical standards that laid the basis for the formation of new ethical principles. The author comes to the conclusion that the appearance of the Note indicated the continuation and acceleration of the important process of professionalization of the bureaucracy, a change in the moral guidelines of officials, which was fully consistent with the very spirit of the times. Although the Note itself was never officially enforced, the problems it raised, and the changes planned served as an important basis for the development of new manage-rial ethos in the future.

Keywords

• administrative reforms
• managerial ethos
• rational bureaucracy
• morskoy sbornik
• system of training officials