Nikolai Semyonovich Mordvinov

Nikolai Semyonovich Mordvinov

Nikolai Semjonowitsch Mordwinow ( Russian: Николай Семёнович Мордвинов ; April 17, 1754 , † March 30, 1845 ) was a Russian admiral and member of the State Council.

Life

Mordvinov came from an old Russian noble family. His father Semyon Mordvinov was an admiral and when he retired from active service he was rewarded by Tsarina Catherine II with extensive estates in Belarus and more than two thousand serfs. At the age of ten Nikolaj was admitted to the Tsar's palace and grew up with the future Tsar Paul I , whose “favorite playmate” he was.

At the age of twelve, Nikolaj left the court and went to the Naval Academy. There he received a good education which not only gave him excellent nautical skills, but also other natural sciences. Besides Russian, Mordvinov was fluent in six other European languages.

After the conquest of the Crimean peninsula by the Russian troops in 1774, Catherine II decided to found the sea fortress Sevastopol there, which was to become the main base of the new Russian Black Sea fleet. Mordvinov was appointed head of the "Black Sea Navy Administration", who enjoyed the protection of Tsarina Grigory Potemkin 's favorite and was promoted to first-class fleet captain. Thus Mordvinov was responsible for building the Black Sea Fleet.

During the Russo-Turkish War 1787-1792 Mordvinov was promoted to Rear Admiral and took part in the siege of the fortress of Ochakov . On October 30, 1788, the squadron under Mordvinov's command destroyed 23 Turkish ships in a bitter sea battle, whereby the attempts of the Turkish naval command to relieve the besieged fortress failed. Shortly afterwards, Ochakov fell. However, instead of the hoped-for praise, Mordvinov had to expect a resignation from the post of fleet commander, which was later attributed to court intrigues and his attempts to combat corruption in the naval administration. In his letter to Potemkin he wrote:

In my post I only tried to serve the eternal glory of the fatherland. Loving servitude or dishonesty had always been alien to me

A year and a half later, Mordvinov was acquitted of the allegations and returned to his post in the summer of 1790, where he remained until 1799. In 1792 he was appointed vice admiral by Catherine II . His resignation was due to high tensions between him and the Commander in Chief of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Ushakov . The new Tsar Paul I, who, despite his previous friendship with Mordvinov, was no longer well-disposed towards him, ordered Mordvinov to be suspended from his post, as he was unable to maintain order in the administration.

After the death of Paul I, Mordvinov was brought out of retirement by his son and successor Alexander I and appointed a member of the "Permanent Council", whose task it was to advise the tsar on the drafting of laws and the implementation of administrative measures support. In this position Mordvinov was one of the most decisive campaigners for the formation of independent ministries ; when the tsar accepted this proposal in 1802, Mordvinov was appointed the first Russian naval minister on September 8, 1802. However, he only stayed in this post for three months: at the end of the year he had to resign. His deputy, Vice-Admiral Chichagov, took over the management of the ministry . Filipp Wigel , himself an important statesman at the time, wrote the following about the reasons for Mordvinov's resignation : He imagined that we had a real parliament; the opinions he expressed were far too bold and, two years after Tsar Paul's death, seemed downright rebellious.

Mordvinov, who remained a member of the “Committee for the Improvement of the Fleet”, dealt in the following years with the problems of the international economy and the integration of Russia into it. He took the view that Russia should direct its expansion policy primarily towards Central Asia and the southern Caucasus in order to forestall British influence in these areas. In his 1816 memorandum, for example, he wrote that Russia's economic interests would make a strong presence in the areas of Khiva and Bukhara inevitable, from where it was not far to India. Russia's trade with the Eastern countries would be the best, the most reliable, and possibly the only effective means by which the government would certainly use to protect the country's borders from foreign influence and to satisfy these areas and to stimulate domestic industry next would come.

Mordvinov, who had been a great supporter of the parliamentary system of government there since his stay in England, tried to enforce the same principles in Russian domestic politics and wrote several memoranda in which he clearly emphasized the advantages of the separation of powers and the parliamentary monarchy over the unrestricted rule of a monarch. The poet Alexander Pushkin , who knew Mordvinov well, wrote in a letter from 1824: Mordvinov alone includes the entire Russian opposition . Three years later, the poet dedicated a poem to the aged Mordvinov in which he explicitly emphasized his political positions. Probably out of gratitude for this moral support, Mordvinov voted on December 3, 1832 for Pushkin's candidacy for a member of the Russian Academy.

Before and after the time of the Decembrist uprising in 1825, Mordvinov enjoyed great popularity and voted as the only member of the investigative commission, which was used as an instrument to try the state criminals of Nikolai I, against the use of the death penalty . Not only the fact that he was related to General Nikolai Nikolayevich Muravyov , the father of several Decembrists, but also their proposal to appoint Mordvinov and General AP Yermolov as members of a provisional government testifies to his sympathy for the aims of the rebel nobles . if their reform plans should become a reality.

Despite this critical attitude towards tsarism and the rule of the new Russian tsar Nicholas I , Mordvinov was spared reprisals due to his old age. He remained politically and socially active until the end. It was not until he was 88 years old that he finally withdrew from the public eye and lived on his estate near St. Petersburg, where he died on March 30, 1845 at the age of 90. His funeral became a socio-political event: not only members of the leading aristocratic houses in Russia came to pay their last respects to Mordvinov, but also the tsar himself. Mordvinov was buried in the Alexander Nevsky monastery . Today he is considered one of the great Russian politicians and masterminds of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

literature

• Valery Fedorschenko: Imperatorsky dom. Vydaiushchiyesya sanovniki. Enziklopedija biografi. T 2 . Olma Media Group, 2003, pp. 76-77. ISBN 978-5-7867-0051-1 . (Russian)

References

1. ^ OW Orlik. Admiral NS Mordwinow i sozdanie tschernomorskogo flota, in: Novaja i novejschaja istorija. 1999, No. 4, pp. 169-186, here: p. 178.
2. ↑ Ibid., P. 183.
3. ↑ Ibid., P. 184.
4. ^ AS Pushkin. Polnoe sobranie sotschinenij, Vol. 10. Moscow, 1958, p. 86

Web links

Wikisource: Nikolai Mordvinow  - Sources and full texts (Russian)

• Nikolai Mordvinow on biografija.ru (Russian)