Having entered the throne, shortly after the death of his father, Alexander the First with his closest friends and associates creates the so-called Secret Committee. Members of this secret organization, apart from the emperor himself, are Count Stroganov, who participated in the French Revolution and is a member of the Jacobin club, as well as members of various Masonic organizations, Count V. Kochubey, Pole Chartorysky and Nikolai Novosiltsev.
The unspoken committee has drawn up a reform program. At its meetings, the introduction of a constitution in Russia, which would speak about the rights of Russian citizens and events in the spirit of the French revolution, was repeatedly discussed. The draft constitution was written by Count Stroganov, who called it "the legal recognition of the rights of the people, as well as those forms by which he has the right to implement them."
Teacher Alexander I, a member of the Masonic Lodge Lagarp, also joined the Secret Committee.
Historians, however, believe that it was Lagarp who persuaded Alexander, who was striving for a constitutional monarchy, to wait a bit with the adoption of the constitution, believing that such a large state as Russia simply needed unshakable and firm power.
Masons such as Zavadovsky, Count A. R. Varentsov, as well as Troshchinsky, who later became ministers, also joined the Secret Committee, a community of people who were concerned about the fate of Russia.
Already in the summer of 1801, the discussion of the Charter for the Russian people began, in the creation of which the “father” for the Russian intelligentsia A. Radishchev, considered an avid enemy of the monarchy, his patron Count Vorontsov, as well as the Freemason, took part.
Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, who is the soul of this organization, most fervently and most decisively stigmatized the Russian system, bringing up for discussion all new reform projects for Russia. According to the deep conviction of the autocrat, as Stroganov says in his memoirs, the center of all reforms should have been personal freedom and property freedom, protecting a person with the help of laws that "do not give a chance to change existing regulations by any arbitrariness."
Considered radical, this committee for the improvement of life in Russia also studied the problems associated with serfdom, understanding the economic necessity of its liquidation.
A decree was also being developed prohibiting the sale of simply peasants without land. However, the top dignitaries, learning about this, began to express sharp dissatisfaction, believing that the foundations of serfdom would thereby be undermined. The emperor did not dare to insist on his own.
Members of the Secret Committee perfectly understood the enormous distance that lay between their plans and the prevailing reality. They had no doubt that any attempt on their part on the real system of values, and first of all on the peasant question, would raise a wave of discontent among the landowners, which could lead both the power and the emperor himself to a clash with the interests of the upper class in the country. And then a civil war could begin , dangerous for everyone.
And therefore, Emperor Alexander I acted prudently and very carefully. Although even such timid little steps responded in society with discontent.
In aristocratic and court circles, the Secret Committee was called the "Jacobin Gang."
All of its founders, led by the emperor Alexander himself, were young, full of vitality and full of good intentions, however, at the same time they were very inexperienced, which caused disagreements.
The unspoken Committee developed its activities by discussing a variety of reforms, all of 1801, until May 1802.
However, then for some reason he was not going to year and a half. And although in 1803 the members of the "Jacobin gang" met several times, the Secret Committee gradually broke up and ceased to exist. I must say that essentially at that time the need for it somehow disappeared.