Alexander Ivanovich Guchkov was born on October 26, 1862 in Moscow, Russia. He was a son of a rich merchant. Unlike most of the conservative politicians of that time, Guchkov did not belong to the Russian nobility. His father, the grandson of a peasant, was a factory owner of some means, whose family came from a stock of Old Believers who had acknowledged the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church while keeping their ancient ritual. His mother was French.
Guchkov studied history and humanities at the Moscow State University, and, after having gone through his military training in a grenadier regiment, left for Germany where he read political economy in Berlin under Schmoller. Academic studies were, however, not suited to his active and adventurous character. He gave them up and started traveling. He rode alone on horseback through Mongolia to western Siberia, and narrowly escaped being slaughtered by a mob. He eventually became a rich capitalist, head of a huge insurance company.
Guchkov went to Siberia to help construct the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and, in 1900, he volunteered to fight against the British during the Boer War. He directed the Russian Red Cross in Manchuria in the course of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904/1905, and returned home to launch a political career in the wake of the revolution of 1905. A leader of the Octobrist party, founded as a group of constitutional moderates devoted to the preservation of the monarchy, Guchkov was elected to the Third Duma in 1907.
Guchkov's five years as a Duma deputy he was defeated for reelection in 1912 set his course for the later years of World War I. He led the Duma's defense committee and developed an interest in modernizing the Russian armed forces. Rising young military officers like Vasily Gurko became his close associates, as did more established figures like General Andrei Polivanov, assistant war minister. Guchkov openly criticized Rasputin, confidant to the imperial family. In December 1913, Guchkov precipitated a split in the Octobrist ranks by opposing support for the increasingly reactionary cabinet ministers being selected by Tsar Nicholas II. Guchkov then led one Octobrist faction; the other was dominated by Mikhail Rodzianko, chairman of the Duma.
The outbreak of World War I reunited the Octobrists and returned Guchkov to national prominence. He directed the Russian Red Cross and, in the spring of 1915, took charge of the new war industries committees. These committees brought together Duma, industrial, and government leaders to solve the bottlenecks in military production that were crippling Russia's war effort. But the tsar's flirtation with political moderation ended by the beginning of the new year. Guchkov, then a member of the State Council, entered the shadow world of political conspiracy. Removing the tsar, perhaps to install the monarch's uncle, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, became the goal; to do so it was necessary to draw sympathetic military leaders into the plot. But Guchkov suffered a serious heart attack in the first months of 1916. He fell ill again toward the close of the year. General Alekseev, chief of staff and a principal target of Guchkov's wooing, was also removed from the scene in late 1916 by failing health.
The coming year brought changes in a less manageable form. Spontaneous revolution exploded in early March, and palace coups were no longer a serious political tool. Guchkov remained a monarchist, however, and he made a vain effort to save the crown, if not the present monarch, by arranging a timely abdication. This failing, Guchkov took the post of minister of war in the new provisional government.
The military expert of the Third Duma could not ride the rapid course of events in the revolutionary spring months. He found himself wedged between the conservative generals at the top of the military hierarchy and the radicals of the Petrograd Soviet. Guchkov tried to slow down the democratization of the army, calling in his friend from the days of the Third Duma, General Polivanov, to lead a study commission on proposed changes in military regulations. Such moves were doomed efforts to dam the tide. Foreign Minister Paul Miliukov attempted to maintain Russia's pre-1917 link to its allies, a step that would bring sizable territorial gains at the close of the war. This sent angry revolutionary crowds into the street calling for the ouster of both Miliukov and Guchkov. The two were driven from office in mid-May 1917.
Guchkov left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution to settle in western Europe. He made his new home in Paris, where he entered the world of anti-Soviet exile politics. But years of involvement in assassination and sabotage plots could not open the way home. Guchkov died in Paris on February 14, 1936.
Guchkov was an active member of the irregular freemasonic lodge, the Grand Orient of Russia's Peoples.
