The capitalist who gave his workers a nine-hour day and built the Progressive Bloc to challenge the autocracy
On 16 May 1917, addressing the congress of military-industrial committees, he warned: "Anti-state tendencies, masking their true essence under a slogan hypnotizing the masses, are leading Russia in giant strides toward catastrophe."
One of Russia's largest textile magnates, he was a pioneering industrialist who introduced a nine-hour working day, worker housing, schools, and hospitals as early as 1900. As founder of the Progressist Party and Deputy Chairman of the Fourth Duma, he organized the Progressive Bloc during World War I, making himself the parliamentary opposition's central figure against the tsarist autocracy. After the February Revolution he served twice as Minister of Trade and Industry in the Provisional Government and, as Kerensky's deputy premier, chaired the cabinet meeting that was arrested at the Winter Palace on the day of the October Revolution. He spent his later decades in French emigration as chairman of Milyukov's newspaper Последние новости and a leading voice of left-liberal émigré politics.
Career Timeline
- 1897–1905Heads family textile firm; introduces 9-hour day, worker housing, schools, hospital in 1900
- 1905–12Co-founds Trade-Industrial Party; deputy chairman, Moscow Stock Exchange Committee
- 1912–14Co-founds Progressist Party; IV Duma deputy (Kostroma); Deputy Chairman of the Duma
- 1915–17.2Deputy chair, Central Military-Industrial Committee; organizes Progressive Bloc; Duma Provisional Committee
- 1917.3–5Minister of Trade and Industry (first cabinet); resigns over labour-capital dispute
- 1917.9–10Deputy PM and Trade Minister; chairs last cabinet meeting, arrested at Winter Palace, 25 Oct
- 1918–40Émigré in France; chairman of Последние новости; leads left-liberal émigré organizations
- 1941–49Resides in US; returns to Paris; dies 1949