Pyotr Nikolayevich Durnovo

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Pyotr Nikolayevich Durnovo

Pyotr Durnovo ( Russian Пётр Николаевич Дурново * 1843 or 1845 ; † September 11 . Jul / 24. September  1915 greg. In Petrograd ) was a Russian politician and Minister of the Interior of the Russian Empire from 1905 to 1906.

Youth and early career

Durnowo came from an old Russian noble family, whose roots go back to the 15th century. His father was the lieutenant governor of the Olonets region for a long time , his mother was the landowner and niece of Admiral Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev . After the privately given training, he took up the military career at the request of his father and entered the naval cadet school in 1857, which he left in 1860 with the rank of lieutenant . From 1860 to 1864 he took part in a circumnavigation of the world as an officer, then served in the Baltic Fleet until 1872 and at the same time attended the law faculty of the Military Law Academy, which he graduated with the rank of fully qualified lawyer in 1870. From 1870 to 1872 he was deputy military prosecutor at the Kronstadt naval base ; then he resigned from military service and switched to civil jurisdiction.

From 1872 to 1880 he held the post of public prosecutor in Vladimir and Rybinsk before he was appointed head of department in the Police Department of the Russian Interior Ministry in 1881, where he held various positions for almost 12 years.

The first highlight

The first high point of his career was his appointment as director of the police department of the Interior Ministry of the Tsarist Empire in 1884, which he headed until 1893. During this time his main concern was devoted to intensifying the struggle against the revolutionaries and other opponents of the regime. He was the initiator of the law to “restrain the influx of foreigners” in the western areas of the Tsarist Empire (primarily the Russian part of Poland ) and the new passport law, which came into force in 1889 and restricted freedom of movement within the state. However, his promising career was suddenly interrupted by a major scandal: Under Durnowo's instructions , undercover agents broke into the apartments of the Brazilian Embassy Secretary, who had a love affair with his mistress , and stole her love letters to obtain evidence . Thereupon the Ambassador of Brazil complained about the blatant breach of international diplomatic customs with the Russian Tsar Alexander III. who reacted very indignantly to the self-willedness of his police chief. To make matters worse, Durnowo was already married and the father of a family at that time. On February 3, 1893, Durnowo was deposed and deported to the Senate.

After Dmitri Sipjagin was appointed Minister of the Interior in October 1899, he decided to bring Durnowo back from "retirement" and appointed him on January 1, 1900 as his deputy. He held this position until 1905. In 1901 he was appointed chairman of the "On the Jewish Question" committee, which dealt with the settlement areas of Russian Jews and monitored compliance with restrictive laws to the detriment of the Jewish population. At the same time he was a representative of the Ministry of Interior in the Committee to Combat Youth Homelessness and oversaw the erection of the monument in honor of the late Tsar Alexander III.

Interior minister

The appointment of Durnowo as Minister of the Interior of the Russian Empire on October 30, 1905, came about at the instigation of the then Prime Minister Sergei Witte , although several influential politicians, including Tsar Nicholas II, were not enthusiastic about it, as they called him " politically dead ”. However, Witte had succeeded in convincing the tsar that Durnovo was indispensable, since he was the only one able to crush the revolution . Durnowo did everything to justify his confidence in himself: he was responsible for the mass arrests of the Social Democrats in December 1905 in Moscow and other cities of the Russian Empire. On his instructions, the head of the Dubassov gendarmerie directed the bloody suppression of the strike movements in Moscow in December 1905, which resulted in several dozen deaths. He closed 63 publishers in just three months and arrested most of their editors. In the opinion of his deputy V. Gurko, Durnowo "saved the regime through its merciless pursuit of revolutionary elements and restored more or less orderly conditions". However, it turned out to be unsustainable as the liberal public was outraged by his brutal action and he never had the tsar's confidence. A few days after Witte's resignation, Durnowo's dismissal followed. Pyotr Stolypin became his successor .

Member of the Council of State

To ease Durnovo's anger, Tsar Nicholas II appointed him a member of the State Council, which at the time played the role of the second chamber of the Duma , the Russian parliament, and can be compared to the Senate . There he led the group of right-wing parties for years and was characterized by his unyielding attitude towards liberalism. He was a supporter of the extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic movement of the Black Hundreds and their leader Vladimir Purishkevich and held the view that only a hard hand could stop Russia from drifting into revolution.

In March 1911, at Stolypin's insistence, he was sent “on vacation” for several months in order to break or circumvent his opposition to administrative reform and liberal peasant legislation. After Stolypin's assassination, Durnowo returned to the State Council and remained a member until shortly before his death.

Awards

See also

literature

  • Gosudarstvennyj sovet rossijskoj imperii. 1905-1917. Moscow, 2008. (German: The State Council of the Russian Empire)
  • Anatoly P. Borodin. Petr Durnovo: Portret zarskogo sanovnika, in: Otecestvennaja istorija No. 3 (2000), pp. 48-69.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical entries on hrono.ru
  2. ^ Sergei Witte: Vospominanija. Vol. 3, Moscow 1960, pp. 74-75
  3. ↑ Anatoly Borodin: Durnovo: portret zarskogo sanovnika. P. 49
  4. ↑ Anatoly Borodin: Durnovo: portret zarskogo sanovnika. P. 53
predecessor Office successor
Alexander Grigoryevich Bulygin Russian Minister of the Interior
1905–1906 		Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin
personal data
SURNAME Durnowo, Pyotr Nikolayevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Дурново, Пётр Николаевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian politician, Minister of the Interior of the Russian Empire (1905–1906)
DATE OF BIRTH 1843 or 1845
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1915
Place of death Petrograd