Gubonin, Pëtr Ionovich (1825–1894): noted Russian industrialist, patron of the arts, and privy councilor to the Russian empire. Born in a serf family, he worked land for quitrent starting in 1847, and managed to save the required amount to buy his freedom from serfdom in 1858. Entering the merchant class in Moscow, he began producing various articles from stone. In 1868, he took up railroad construction. His successful projects included the Orël–Vitebsk, Gryazi–Tsaritsyn, Lozovo–Sevastopol, Ural Mining, and Baltic Railroads. In 1871, he became one of the founders of the Kolomna Machine-Building and Kulebaki Mining and Steel Mill Company, one of the leading Russian shipbuilding and steam locomotive manufacturing enterprises. In the late 1860s, he entered the oil business, founding Sakhansky & Co. Partnership to develop the Kerch oil fields. In 1882, he acquired a controlling stock interest in the Russian-American Petroleum Production Partnership, which owned a refinery at Kuskovo outside Moscow. In 1883, he founded the Neft Petroleum Products Production, Transportation, Storage and Trading Partnership, with an authorized capital of 2 million rubles. He was an active member of the Imperial Society of Lovers of Nature, Anthropology, and Ethnography and a contending member of the Russian Technical Society.
Guchkov, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1862–1936): chairman of the State Duma (1910–1911), a noted Russian politician, and leader of the Union of October 17 Party. He was born to a prominent merchant family, and graduated from the History and Philology Department of Moscow University in 1886 before studying at Berlin and Heidelberg Universities in Germany. He was a member of the Moscow City Duma from 1893 to 1897. He worked in the security department of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria from 1897 to 1899. He fought as a volunteer on the Boer side in the Boer War in South Africa in 1900. He served as director of the Moscow Discount Bank from 1902 to 1908. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, he worked at the front as a representative of the Russian Red Cross. In March 1910, he was elected chairman of the State Duma. He spoke out against radical changes to the political system, arguing that they could lead to the collapse of the Russian state. He served as a member of the State Council in 1907 and from 1915 on. He was chairman of the Central Military and Industrial Committee from 1915 to 1917 and a member of the Special Defense Council. He was one of the organizers of the murder of Tsar favorite Grigory Rasputin in December 1916. Along with deputy Vasily Shulgin, he persuaded Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate the throne in February 1917. He served as minister of the military and navy under the Provisional Government from March to May 1917, and was elected in May 1917 to the State Council as a representative of trade and industry. He was one of the organizers of General Lavr Kornilov’s coup d’état in August 1917. He was an active member of the White Movement, and emigrated to France in 1919.
Kankrin, Count Yegor Frantsevich (1774–1845): noted Russian public figure, economist, and infantry general (1828). He was one of the biggest financiers in the history of Russia. He was educated at Hesse and Magdeburg Universities, and in 1800, was given the rank of collegiate adviser as an aide to the executive board of the Old Russian Salt Works. In 1803, he was appointed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an adviser to the State Economic Expedition. Starting in 1809, he was inspector of foreign colonies of Petersburg Province. His research works on economics attracted the attention of the emperor. In 1811, he was made Actual State Councilor and appointed aide to the Quartermaster General of the War Ministry. During the Patriotic War of 1812, he served as Quartermaster General of the First Western Army, and from 1813, of the whole active Russian army. After hostilities ended, he worked to settle accounts with foreign nations. The former allies and France had initially demanded nearly 360 million rubles of Russia, but through skillful negotiations, Kankrin reduced this amount to 60 million. He became a member of the War Council in 1820, and member of the State Council in 1821. From April 1823 to May 1844, he served as Minister of Finance, and carried out a reform of the monetary system, guilds, and several other important measures to revive the financial system. He was an honorary member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the author of a large number of theoretical works on economics and finance.
Kerensky, Aleksandr Fëdorovich (1881–1970): a noted Russian public figure and politician, as well as prime minister of the Russian Provisional Government in 1917. He graduated from the St. Petersburg University School of Law in 1904, after which he worked as a lawyer’s assistant and made friends with members of the Liberation Union, which united the liberal supporters of zemstvo [a form of local self-government] and the intelligentsia. He was arrested in December 1905 for the possession of antigovernment leaflets and remained in prison until spring 1906. Not long after his release from prison, he became a popular lawyer and was involved in a number of political trials. In 1912, he was elected to the fourth State Duma from the Labor Group [Trudoviki] and became the leader of the faction. An active member of the 1917 February Revolution, he participated in the creation and the management of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, proclaiming himself a proponent of the democratic republic system. He was deputy chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, joined the Provisional Government, and became a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He was the only member of the Provisional Government to be a part of all its different forms from February until October 1917, successively holding the posts of minister of justice, prime minister, and minister of war and the navy. His inability as head of the government to stabilize the country’s situation in the fall of 1917 soon led to his name being associated in the public consciousness with kerenki, a type of surrogate money that had no serial number, series, or year of issue and depreciated rapidly. On October 25, 1917, the eve of the October Revolution, he traveled to the front to meet soldiers he had summoned, but they never appeared. He dressed in a sailor’s uniform at the Gatchina Palace to escape from revolutionary sailors. In June 1918, he traveled abroad to organize intervention against the Bolsheviks. He lived in France for more than 20 years and worked actively with immigrant organizations. He published the newspapers Dni [“Days”] and Novaya Rossiya [“New Russia”] and regularly spoke out against the Stalinist dictatorship in the USSR. He moved to the US in 1940 and in 1956 began cooperating with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University, where he was a professor. Along with Professor Robert Browder, he published three volumes of documents called The Russian Provisional Government [Rossiyskoye Vremennoye pravitelstvo] in 1961. He is buried in the UK.
Khomyakov, Nikolay Alekseyevich (1850–1925): chairman of the State Duma (1907–1910) and one of the heads of the Union of October 17 Party (Octobrists). He was born to a noble family, and graduated from the Moscow University School of Physics and Mathematics in 1874. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, he enlisted in the army as a volunteer and helped liberate Bulgaria from the Ottoman yoke. In 1880, he became the Sychëvka District head and was head of the Smolensk Province nobility from 1886 to 1895. He was appointed director of the Department of Agriculture under the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property in 1896. He served as a member of the Agricultural Council of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1904. He was a member of district congresses in 1904 and 1905 and became a member of the Central Committee of the Union of October 17 Party in 1906. Khomyakov was elected as a member of the State Council from the nobility of Smolensk Province in 1906. He served as a deputy from Smolensk Province in the second and fourth State Dumas and was a member of the office of the parliamentary bloc of the Union of October 17 Party. He was chairman of the third State Duma from November 1907 until March 1910. He served as chairman of the St. Petersburg Club of Public Figures from 1913 to 1915, and took charge of the Russian Red Cross in 1915. Khomyakov was evacuated from the Crimea along with units of the Volunteer Army in 1920, and lived the last years of his life in exile in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik.