Vladimir Nikolayevich Kokovtsov

Vladimir Kokovtsov

Count Vladimir Kokovtsov ( Russian Коковцов, Владимир Николаевич ; * April 18 ^jul. / The thirtieth April  1853 ^greg. In Ujesd Borowitschi , province Novgorod ; † 29. January 1943 in Paris ) was a Russian statesman, finance minister from 1904 to 1914 and Prime Minister from 1911 to 1914.

Life

Born into a noble family born with lands in the government of Novgorod, visited Kokovtsov the Alexander Lyceum and the University of St. Petersburg , where he Jura studied. In 1873 he entered the civil service and worked in the Ministry of Justice until 1890, initially in the statistical department, later in the legislative department and finally in the criminal department. From 1879 he was deputy head of the prison inspection department. In 1891 he became State Secretary of the Economic Affairs Department of the State Chancellery and in 1896, succeeding Afinogen Antonowitsch, Deputy Minister of Finance and closest collaborator to Sergei Witte. From 1902 to 1904 he was head of the State Chancellery.

From February 1904 to February 1914 Kokowzow held the post of Finance Minister of the Russian Empire, with an interruption from November 1905 to May 1906. From 1905 to 1917 he was a member of the State Council . He completed a number of major foreign and domestic bonds . He pursued a strict austerity policy and introduced protective tariffs . His prudent reforms allowed a significant expansion of the gold reserves . In 1909 Kokowzow was present when the Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi was murdered in Harbin.

After the assassination of Pyotr Stolypin in September 1911, Kokowzow was additionally entrusted with the office of prime minister, which he held until his dismissal at the end of January 1914. He continued Stolypin's reform course and pursued a foreign policy of close agreement with France and a compromise with Germany. After the end of his term of office he was raised to the rank of count.

In 1917 he became a member of the supervisory board of the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade. After the February Revolution of 1917 he withdrew to his estates and later moved to Kislovodsk . After the October Revolution he was temporarily taken prisoner by the Cheka , but in November 1918 he managed to emigrate to Finland, from where he traveled on to France. He was active in Parisian emigrant circles and in 1923 became chairman of the "Union of Followers of Remembrance of Tsar Nicholas II." In 1933 he published his memoirs on the period from 1903 to 1919.

Fonts

• Le bolchévisme à l'œuvre. La ruine morale et économique dans le pays des Soviets. Préface de Raymond Poincaré. Paris: Marcel Giard 1931.
• Из моего прошлого. Воспоминания 1903-1919. Париж: Иллюстрированная Россия 1933 (online) .
• Out of my past. Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov. New York: Stanford University Press 1935 (preview) .

Web links

Commons : Wladimir Nikolajewitsch Kokowzow  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Biography on hrono.ru (Russian)
• Newspaper article about Vladimir Nikolajewitsch Kokowzow in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

predecessor	Office	successor
Pyotr Stolypin	Prime Minister of the Russian Empire September 18, 1911 - January 30, 1914	Ivan Goremykin