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the end in essence a collection of individual heads ofdepartments, each responsible separately to the tsar,not to the Duma, before which they could appear butof which they were not members (cf. p. 69).Questions of high policy were decided in the nineteenthcentury in fundamentally the same way as in theeighteenth, after the death of Peter the Great—that isto say, not by any regularized procedure or definite body,but by shifting procedures and by the interplay of variousbodies and various favourites or outstanding personsrevolving round a formally supreme sovereign, whosesanction, whether nominal or not, had to be obtainedby means that varied with the personal characteristics ofthis or that sovereign.Thus, in the eighteenth century, directing power forthe most part ebbed and flowed between the inmostcouncil (whether it went under the name of the supremesecret council, the imperial cabinet, the conference ofministers, or the state council), the senate headed bythe procurator-general (in the end a combination ofminister of justice, finance, and interior), and the collegesof war, navy, and foreign affairs. In the nineteenthcentury directing power was disputed between the chiefministries (especially army, interior, and finance), theimperial chancellery (see p. 112), special ad hoc imperialcouncils, and the viceregal governors-general (nearlyalways military men) in Poland, New Russia, Transcaucasia,and Asia. Even at the end of the nineteenthcentury it could be said without much exaggeration that"autocracy" or "tsarism" was "an irresponsible federationof independent departments, whose relations witheach other were not always friendly, or even neutral,and sometimes partaking of the character of almost openhostility."Partly in order to control the regular bureaucracy,partly in order to provide flexibility in place of its rigidityand narrowness, partly as the result of personal idiosyncrasies,most of the sovereigns from Peter the Greatonwards made frequent use of specially constitutedcommittees for this or that particular purpose or oftrusted individuals (under Alexander I and Nicholas I109