tect, who, moreover, is burdened with the responsibility for an expensive new prison in the town of Vérkhni Údinsk, as well as for all other architectural work in a territory having an area of 547,905 square versts. It is manifest that one architect cannot cope with this amount of work; and the lack of technical supervision, by affecting disadvantageously the durability of the structures, results in the necessity for speedy repairs. In order to avoid these difficulties — the removal of which is beyond the limits of my power, but the responsibility for which rests on the local Siberian administration — I made a proposition to the Minister of the Interior to increase the salaries of the technical experts for whom provision is made in the East-Siberian civil lists.[1] I do not ask for an increase in the number of officers provided for in the civil lists, but only for an increase in their salaries; and I do this in the hope that I shall thus attract hither a class of officers for whom there are always vacancies. I estimate at 9190 rúbles the increase of expenditure that this will necessitate. It will be far more economical for the imperial treasury to authorize this increased annual outlay than to spend a large amount at one time on badly constructed buildings. The losses that result every year from the bad construction of Government buildings in Eastern Siberia is incomparably greater than the amount of the proposed new expenditure. If the latter be authorized, it will at least be possible, on the one hand, to have in Eastern Siberia the necessary number of technologic officers, and on the other to make the local authorities responsible for the proper use of the building appropriations.[2]
A part of the second report of Governor-general Anúchin to the Tsar upon the state of affairs in Eastern Siberia. Delivered to Alexander III. in March, 1882. From a "secret" copy.[3]
- ↑ Marginal note in the handwriting of the Tsar: "What has hindered this?" i. e. Why has this not been done?
- ↑ This report was written and delivered to the Tsar in 1880. Four years later the petty question of appropriating 9190 rúbles to increase the salaries of Government architects in Eastern Siberia had not even reached the stage of consideration in the Council of the Empire. The appropriation was trifling in amount [about $4600]; it was urged by the governor-general; the Tsar himself wanted to know why it had not been made; nobody, apparently, had any objection to it; and yet it was impossible to get the proposed reform under way. Governor-general Anúchin finished his term of service in Eastern Siberia and returned to European Russia without having seen this thing done. One of the advantages of an autocratic and despotic form of government is supposed to be the promptness with which a desirable change can be effected, but I doubt whether there is a country on the globe in which it is more difficult to get a certain class of useful things done than in Russia. If the thing that would be useful to the people promises to be profitable also to the high officials of the bureaucracy, it can be brought about in twenty-four hours; but if it be a measure of administrative economy, a scheme to secure impartial justice, or humanitarian reform, it may languish in obscurity for twenty-four years.
- ↑ This report was in my possession only a short time, and I was compelled to make the following translation very hurriedly, It is not as smooth and idiomatic in construction, therefore, as I could wish, but it
