Background
Aleksandr Protopopov was born in Simbirsk province, December 30, 1866. A member of a wealthy family of noble landowners, Protopopov was a prosperous textile manufacturer as well.
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Aleksandr Protopopov was born in Simbirsk province, December 30, 1866. A member of a wealthy family of noble landowners, Protopopov was a prosperous textile manufacturer as well.
He attended the select Nickolaev Cavalry School as a cadet before being commissioned into the Horse Grenadier Regiment of the Imperial Guard. After leaving the army in 1889, Protopopov studied law. He then became a director of his father's textile plant. At some point he moved to St Petersburg where he became active in the financial community.
He served as a leader of the Simbirsk nobility in 1912, but his route to national prominence was through the Duma, the new parliamentary body established in the wake of the revolution of 1905. Protopopov was chosen a representative to the Third Duma in 1907, then reelected to the Fourth Duma in 1912. Politically, he stood on the left of the Octobrist party, a group of industrialists and landowners favoring a gradually evolving constitutional monarchy. In 1914 he was chosen vice chairman of the Duma, and he retained this post during the first two years of World War I.
Protopopov played only a minor role in the first half of the war. As Duma attitudes toward the monarchical regime grew more hostile, Protopopov joined with other moderates in forming a so-called Progressive Bloc, to demand greater Duma influence on government decision making. He also served as chairman of a council of representatives of the metal-lurgical industry, trying to coordinate the output of Russia's factories with the needs of a wartime economy. In the summer of 1916 he led a group of Duma deputies on an official visit to Great Britain.
In September 1916, it came as an unpleasant surprise to his Duma colleagues and foreign diplomats alike when Protopopov was appointed minister of the interior. Tsarist ministers almost never emerged from the ranks of Duma deputies; and, by autumn 1916, relations between the Duma and the government had become so acrimonious that most deputies felt accepting such an offer called Protopopov's loyalty to the Duma into question. Moreover, his reputation was clouded by an incident that had occurred en route from Britain. The future interior minister had met with an unofficial German representative, a member of the Warburg banking firm, in Stockholm. They discussed possible peace terms. Protopopov had made no commitments, and the conversation was, at most, exploratory. Rumors flew all the same.
In Petrograd, and in Allied capitals, one heard that Protopopov, as well as Premier Boris Sturmer, was maneuvering to betray the Entente by making a separate peace with Germany. Protopopov's elevation can be attributed to the support of Empress Alexandra and her personal adviser, Grigory Rasputin. Sturmer's inability to run the war effort had become impossible for anyone to ignore. The empress hoped that Pro- topopov would be capable both in dealing with the large problems of the war (including managing the Duma), and in docilely preserving the prerogatives of the crown. The new minister's qualifications for the most powerful post in the Cabinet were minimal: he lacked administrative experience, and, notwithstanding his obvious taste for high office, he had never demonstrated any notable political abilities. Moreover, his health was ravaged by an advanced case of syphilis; contemporary observers found him physically weak and emotionally erratic. Even Tsar Nicholas had doubts about the appointment; the ability of the empress to sway her husband's crucial political decisions is particularly evident in Protopopov's appointment and his ability to remain in office for seven months.
Sturmer fell in late November, to be succeeded by Aleksandr Trepov and, in January 1917, by Prince Nikolai Golitsyn. Neither of the last premiers played a substantial role in policymaking; thus, the increasingly erratic Protopopov dominated the Cabinet as tsarism went to its grave. The political prospects for Tsar Nicholas and the monarchy were dim by late 1916, but Protopopov managed to make a bad situation hopeless. He moved to expand his ministry's powers, to turn the clock back to the glory days of the 1880s. He wavered between attempts to woo the Duma at one point he offered to double the members' pay and a hard line that meant calling elections for a Fifth Duma. Nikolai Maklakov, interior minister at the start of the war, was called out of retirement to put his gerrymandering and other gray skills to work to ensure satisfactory election results. Working-class leaders from Petrograd and Moscow were rounded up by the police, while Duma deputies came under tight political surveillance.
When bread riots broke out in Petrograd in early March 1917, Protopopov busied himself setting matches to this revolutionary tinder. He insisted that the city's food supply be directed by the ministry of the interior. He reassured the tsar, hundreds of miles off in Mogilev, that military force would serve to end the unrest. Finally, in the early hours of March 12, he won over his Cabinet colleagues to a call to prorogue the Russian legislative body. Reluctant Duma members were virtually shoved toward participation in the revolution. By that evening, as opposition to the government swelled, Protopopov's colleagues pushed him to resign. The collapse of the entire Cabinet followed at once.
Protopopov was arrested by the new provisional government. The moderates of the March Revolution might have let him off with a lengthy imprisonment, but the Bolshevik Revolution in November sealed his fate. The last, pathetic "strongman" of Tsar Nicholas was executed by firing squad, January 1, 1918.