Keep in mind this is a subject I know next to nothing about, so there'll probably be some mistakes here and there.
Mikhail Speransky was a Russian statesman whose influence reached its height during the early reign of tsar Alexander I. He was apparently a reformist, but while some of his projects were implemented, such as the creation of the State Council, others were not, as a result of his fall from grace. Why did this happen, and did the resumption of hostilities with France have something to do with it?
As I understand, references to Nappy were just cherry on a cake. With his reforms he managed to piss off pretty much everybody who mattered, the estate owners, bureaucrats and the court. Not to mention Alexander himself who was pissed off by an alleged lack of a due respect.
What could've happened to Russia's political development, had Speransky stayed an important figure?
After return from exile in 1816 he remained an important figure and, as a governor-general of Siberia he got quite a reputation: his predecessor was fired from all his positions (small wonder that his son had a serious grudge against the regime) and so were two governors. 48 officials were put on trial and 681 was accused in violating the law and had to pay, in total, 3,000,000 rubles in fines. Couple high-ranking officials committed suicide. On a positive side, his own administration proved to be quite beneficial for the region. But his administrative activities in Kazakh lands (Western Siberia) caused serious problems.
Then he was one of three members of the commission that created military settlements and was in charge of the codification of the Russian laws and, what was important, NI assigned him an instructor of the judicial and political sciences to the heir to the throne (we all know how “successful” AII was in both areas).
As I understand, he was a constitutionalist but in the terms that the law has to come from the top and guarantee rights of the subjects, not that the subjects would be creating the laws. Aka, civil rights but not
political. There was something about participation of the personally free and property owning population in the governing (Dumas up to state level) but not in the
administration. Seemingly, something similar to what NII eventually came with but can’t say anything about the specifics. Ditto for the judicial system and trial by jury.
Not sure if this program was realistic in the 1st half of the XIX and, if tried, how would it work out. You see, by the 1905 Russia already had a well-established class of the professional demagogues: lawyers and all types of the journalists, publicists, and other “public figures”. Nothing of the kind was around in S’s times so who was going to fill these elective positions? Mostly nobility and few merchants. Definitely not the mostly illiterate “lower classes”.