Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov

Russian Empire state institutions Imperial establishment and White movement 1798–1883 ○ Natural causes

Foreign minister who ran Russian diplomacy for 26 years after the Crimean War and repudiated the Black Sea clauses in 1870–1871

Born at Haapsalu in 1798 into a princely family, he studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum with Pushkin. He entered the foreign office, was minister in Stuttgart and from 1850 to the German Confederation's diet at Frankfurt, where he first met Bismarck. After serving as envoy in Vienna during the Crimean War, he was appointed foreign minister by Alexander II in 1856. His circular declaring that "Russia is not sulking, she is composing herself" kept Russia out of foreign entanglements; in 1863 he rebuffed Western intervention over the suppression of the January Uprising in Poland, and in 1867 he became chancellor of the empire. In return for securing Austria-Hungary's neutrality in 1870, he won Bismarck's support for repudiating the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris. He considered the Congress of Berlin of 1878 his greatest failure and retired in 1882.

Also known as: Alexander Gortchakoff · Gortschakoff