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
The young furniture-factory heir whose plant became the heart of the Presnya uprising
Arrested and taken to the Semyonovsky regiment camp, Shmit was stood against a wall and threatened with execution on the spot; broken by days of sleep deprivation and interrogation, he finally confessed.
Heir to a Moscow furniture factory who threw himself into the 1905 Revolution, turning his plant into an arsenal, hospital, and morgue for workers' fighting squads and providing the material base for the Presnya armed uprising. He introduced a nine-hour workday and wage increases, and gave 20,000 rubles to the RSDLP for arming the workers. Arrested after the December uprising was crushed, he was tortured and died under suspicious circumstances in Butyrka prison; his inheritance of about 280,000 rubles became a critical financial foundation for the Bolsheviks.
Career timeline
1902Father's death; inherited the furniture factory
1904Came of age, assumed full control of the factory
1905Introduced 9-hour workday and wage rises; gave 20,000 rubles to RSDLP; turned factory into a revolutionary stronghold
1905.12Presnya uprising: factory served as arsenal, hospital and morgue, destroyed by Semyonovsky regiment artillery
1905.12.18Arrested, tortured and threatened with execution
1907.02.13Died under suspicious circumstances in Butyrka prison
The 'King of Fighters' who dominated Soviet fighter aviation for a decade
Returning from his 1939 delegation to Germany, Polikarpov found his design bureau gone — his engineers, I-200 project, and factory had all been transferred to the newly formed MiG OKB.
Soviet aircraft designer known as the 'King of Fighters.' His I-15 biplane and revolutionary I-16 monoplane formed the backbone of Soviet fighter aviation (1934–1941), seeing combat in Spain, China, Khalkhin Gol, and the early Great Patriotic War. Arrested in 1929 on fabricated sabotage charges and sentenced to death, he was reprieved to work at OGPU prison design bureau TsKB-39, where he produced the I-5; amnestied in 1931, fully rehabilitated posthumously in 1956. During his 1939 delegation to Germany, his bureau was transferred to Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich to form the MiG OKB; he rebuilt OKB-51 and continued designing advanced fighters. He also created the U-2 (Po-2), over 30,000 built.
Career timeline
1916–1918Engineer at Russo-Baltic Carriage Factory under Igor Sikorsky; production head for S-16 fighter
1918–1923Technical department, Dux factory (GAZ No. 1); rose to head of technical department
1923–1928Chief designer at GAZ No. 1; designed R-1, I-1, U-2
1929–1931Arrested; developed I-5 at OGPU prison design bureau TsKB-39; amnestied 1931
1933–1939Head of Brigade No. 2, TsKB-39 → chief designer at Plants 84, 156, 1; I-15 and I-16 fighters
1940–1944Director and chief designer of OKB-51; I-185 fighter; professor at MAI from 1943
