Viatscheslaf Konstantinovich Plehve was a Russian statesman.
Background
Viatscheslaf Konstantinovich Plehve was born in Meshchovsk, Russia, on 20 April 1846. He was the only son of schoolteacher Konstantin von Plehve and Elizaveta Mikhailovna Shamaev, daughter of a minor landowner. In 1851, Plehve's family moved from Meshchovsk to Warsaw, where his father accepted a job as an instructor in a gymnasium.
Education
He was educated at Warsaw and studied law at the university in St Petersburg.
Career
He entered the bureaucracy in the department of justice, in which he rose rapidly to be assistant solicitor-general in Warsaw, then solicitor-general in St Petersburg, and in 1881 director of the state police.
As assistant to the minister of the interior he attracted the attention of Alexander III by the skill he showed in investigating the circumstances of the assassination of Alexander II.
He received the title of secretary of state in 1894, became a member of the council of the empire, and in 1902 succeeded Sipiaguine as minister of the interior.
His logical mind and determined support of the autocratic principle gained the tsar's entire confidence.
He was assassinated on the 28th of July, 1904 by a bomb thrown under his carriage as he was on his way to Peterhof to make his report to the tsar; the assassin, Sasonov, was a member of the fighting organization of the socialist revolutionary party.
Achievements
Politics
Plehve carried out the "russification" of the alien provinces within the Russian Empire, and earned bitter hatred in Poland, in Lithuania and especially in Finland. He despoiled the Armenian Church, and was credited with being accessory to the Kishinev massacres.
He opposed commercial development on ordinary European lines on the ground that it involved the existence both of a dangerous proletariat and of a prosperous middle class equally inimical to autocracy. He was thus a determined opponent of M. de Witte's policy.
Connections
He was married to Zinaida Nikolaevna and had two children.