Sergei Vitte

He argued for the following reforms: creation of a legislative parliament (Imperial Duma) elected via a democratic franchise; granting of civil liberties; establishing a cabinet government and a 'constitutional order'. These demands, which basically comprised the political programme of the Liberation Movement, were an attempt to isolate the political Left by pacifying the liberals. Witte emphasised that repression would be only a temporary solution to the problem, and a risky one, because he believed the armed forces — whose loyalty was now in question — could collapse if they were to be used against the masses. Most of the military advisers to the Tsar agreed with Witte, as did the Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Trepov, who wielded considerable influence at court. Only when Nicholas II's cousin Grand Duke Nikolai threatened to shoot himself if he did not agree to Witte's demands, following the Tsar's request for him to accept appointment as dictator, did the Tsar agree. He was embarrassed to have been forced by a former "railway clerk", a man who was a bureaucrat and "businessman," to relinquish his autocratic rule. Witte later said that the Tsar's court were ready to use the Manifesto as a temporary concession, and later return to autocracy "when the revolutionary tide subsided".

Witte's reputation was burnished in the West after his secret memoirs were published in translation in 1921. They had been completed in 1912 and kept in a bank in Bayonne, France. He had left orders that they could not be published during the lifetimes of him and his contemporaries. The original manuscript of his memoirs are now held in Columbia University Library's Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture.

During the July Crisis in 1914, Grigori Rasputin and Witte desperately urged the Tsar to avoid the conflict and warned that Europe faced calamity if Russia became involved. The advice went unheeded; the French ambassador Maurice Paléologue complained to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sazonov. Witte died shortly afterwards at his home in St. Petersburg; his death was attributed to meningitis or a brain tumor. His third-class funeral was held at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Witte had no children, but he had adopted his wife's by her first marriage. According to Edvard Radzinsky, Witte asked for the title of count to be given to his grandson L.K. Naryshkin (b. 1905, see image above). Nothing is known about his life after this period.

Witte continued in Russian politics as a member of the State Council but he was never again appointed to an administrative role in the government. He was ostracized by the Russian establishment. In January 1907 a bomb was found planted in his home. The investigator Pavel Alexandrovich Alexandrov proved that the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, had been involved. During the winter season, Witte lived in Biarritz and started writing his Memoirs, but he returned to St Petersburg in 1908.

After his skillful diplomacy Witte was appointed as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the equivalent of Prime Minister, and formed Sergei Witte's Cabinet, not belonging to any party, as there were none. No longer was the Tsar the head of the government. "Immediately upon my nomination as President of the Imperial Council I made it clear that the Procurator of the Most Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev, could not remain in office, for he definitely represented the past." He was replaced by Prince Alexey D. Obolensky. Trepov and Bulygin were dismissed and, after many discussions, Durnovo was appointed as Minister of Interior on 1 January 1906; his appointment is considered one of the greatest errors Witte made during his administration.

Following months of civil unrest and outbreaks of violence in what became known as the 1905 Russian Revolution, Witte framed the October Manifesto of 1905 and the accompanying government communication to establish constitutional government. He was not convinced it would solve Russia's problems with the Tsarist autocracy. On 20 October 1905 Witte was appointed as the first Chairman of the Russian Council of Ministers (effectively Prime Minister). Assisted by his Council, he designed Russia's first constitution. But within a few months Witte fell into disgrace as a reformer because of continuing court opposition to these changes. He resigned on 5 May [O.S. 22 April] 1906 before the First Duma assembled on 10 May [O.S. 27 April] 1906. Witte was fully confident that he had resolved the main problem: providing political stability to the regime, but according to him, the "peasant problem" would further determine the character of the Duma's activity.

Witte was brought back into the governmental decision-making process to help deal with growing civil unrest. Confronted with increasing opposition and, after consulting with Witte and Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky, the Tsar issued a reform ukase on December 25, 1904 with vague promises. After the Bloody Sunday riots of 1905, Witte supplied 500 rubles, the equivalent of 250 dollars, to Father Gapon in order for the leader of the demonstration to leave the country. Witte recommended that the government issue a manifesto related to the people's demands. Schemes of reform would be elaborated by Goremykin and a committee consisting of elected representatives of the zemstva and municipal councils under the presidency of Witte. On 3 March the Tsar condemned the revolutionaries. The government issued a strongly worded prohibition of any further agitation in favor of a constitution. By spring a new political system was beginning to form in Russia. A petition campaign was conducted seeking a wide variety of proposed changes, such as ending the war with Japan, which lasted from February to July 1905. In June mutiny broke out on the Russian battleship Potemkin.

Witte was appointed on 16 August 1903 (O.S.) as chairman of the Committee of Ministers, a position he held until October 1905. While officially a promotion, the post had no real power. Witte's removal from the influential post of Minister of Finance was engineered under the pressure of the landed gentry and his political enemies within the government and at the court. But historians Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Robert K. Massie say that Witte's opposition to Russian designs on Korea resulted in his resigning from the government in 1903.

In summer 1898 he addressed a memorandum to the Tsar calling for an agricultural conference on the reform of the peasant community. This resulted in three years of talks about laws to abolish collective responsibility and facilitate the resettlement of farmers onto lands on the outskirts of the Empire. Many of his ideas were later adopted by Pyotr Stolypin. In 1902 Witte's supporter, Dmitry Sipyagin, the Minister of Home Affairs, was assassinated. In an attempt to keep up the modernization of the Russian economy, Witte called and oversaw the Special Conference on the Needs of the Rural Industry. This conference was to provide recommendations for future reforms and compile the data to justify those reforms. By 1900 the growth in the manufacturing industry had been four times faster than in the preceding five-year period and six times faster than in the decade before that. External trade in industrial goods was equal to that of Belgium. In 1904 the Union of Liberation was formed, which demanded economic and political reform.

In 1896, Witte undertook a major currency reform to place the Russian ruble on the gold standard. This resulted in increased investment activity and an increase in the inflow of foreign capital. Witte also enacted a law in 1897 limiting working hours in enterprises, and in 1898 reformed commercial and industrial taxes.

In 1895, Witte established a state monopoly on alcohol, which became a major source of revenue for the Russian government. In 1896, he concluded the Li–Lobanov Treaty with Li Hongzhang of the Qing dynasty. One of the rights secured for Russia was the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway across northeast China, which greatly shortened the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway to its projected eastern terminus at Vladivostok. However, following the Triple Intervention, Witte strongly opposed the Russian occupation of Liaodong Peninsula and the construction of the naval base at Port Arthur in the Russia–Qing Convention of 1898.

Tsar Alexander III appointed Witte in 1892 as acting Minister of Ways and Communications. This gave him both control of the railroads in Russia and the authority to impose a reform on the tariffs charged. "Russian railroads gradually became perhaps the most economically operated railroads of the world.". Profits were high: over 100 million gold rubles a year to the government (exact amount unknown due to accounting defects).

A new customs law for Russia was passed in 1891, spurring an increase in industrialization by the turn of the 20th century. At the same time that Witte worked to achieve industrialization, he also fought for practical education. He said that railways operated by the state would be useless "unless it does its utmost for spreading technical education..."

Orlando Figes has described Witte as the 'great reforming finance minister of the 1890s', 'one of Nicholas's most enlightened ministers', and as the architect of Russia's new parliamentary order in 1905.

Witte worked in railroad management for twenty years, after having begun as a ticket clerk. He served as Russian Director of Railway Affairs within the Finance Ministry from 1889 to 1891; and during this period, he oversaw an ambitious program of railway construction. Until then less than one-fourth of the small railway systems was under direct state control, but Witte set about expanding the rail lines and getting the railway service under control as a State monopoly. Witte also obtained the right to assign employees based on their performance, or merit, rather than for patronage, that is, political or familial connections. In 1889, he published a paper titled "National Savings and Friedrich List", which cited the economic theories of Friedrich List and justified the need for a strong domestic industry, protected from foreign competition by customs barriers.

Witte, neither a liberal nor a conservative, attracted foreign capital to boost Russia's industrialization. He served under the last two emperors of Russia, Alexander III (r. 1881–1894 ) and Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917 ). During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), he had risen to a position in which he controlled all the traffic passing to the front along the lines of the Odessa Railways. As Minister of Finance from 1892 to 1903 Witte presided over extensive industrialization and achieved government monopoly control over an expanded system of railroad lines.

In 1879, Witte accepted a post in St. Petersburg, where he would meet his future wife. He moved to Kiev the following year. In 1883, he published a paper on "Principles of Railway Tariffs for Cargo Transportation", in which he also discussed social issues and the role of the monarchy. Witte gained popularity in the government. In 1886, he was appointed manager of the privately held Southwestern Railways, based in Kiev, and was noted for increasing its efficiency and profitability. Around this time, he met Tsar Alexander III. But he had conflict with the Tsar's aides when he warned of the danger in their practice of using two powerful freight locomotives to achieve high speeds for the Royal Train. His warnings were proven in the October 1888 Borki train disaster; afterward, Witte was appointed as Director of State Railways.

After a wreck on the Odessa Railways in late 1875 cost many lives, Witte was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison. However, while still contesting the case in court, Witte directed the Odessa Railways in achieving extraordinary efforts towards the transport of troops and war materials in the Russo-Turkish War, and attracted the attention of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, who commuted his prison sentence to two weeks. Witte had devised a novel system of double-shift operations in his efforts to overcome delays on the rail lines.

Witte's father Julius Christoph Heinrich Georg Witte was from a Lutheran Baltic German family of Dutch origin. He converted to Russian Orthodoxy upon marriage with Yekaterina Fadeyeva. His father was made a member of the knighthood in Pskov, the second-largest city in the Russian Empire, but moved as a civil servant to Saratov and Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia). Sergei was raised on the estate of his mother's parents. His grandfather was Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeyev, a Governor of Saratov and Privy Councillor of the Caucasus, his grandmother was Princess Helene Dolgoruki. Sergei had two brothers (Alexander and Boris) and two sisters (Olga and Sophia). Helena Blavatsky, noted as a mystic, was their first cousin. Witte studied at a Tiflis gymnasium, but he took more interest in music, fencing and riding than in academics. He finished Gymnasium I in Kishinev and began studying Physico-Mathematical Sciences at the Novorossiysk University in Odessa in 1866, graduating top of his class in 1870.

Sergei Vitte was born on June 29, 1849 in Tiflis as Sergei Yulevich Witte.