Nikolai Pokrovsky

Nikolai Nikolayevich Pokrovsky (Russian: Николай Николаевич Покровский) (27 January 1865, St Petersburg – 12 December 1930, Kaunas) was a (nationalist) Russian politician and the last foreign minister of the Russian Empire.

Pokrovsky attended the law schools of the Moscow State University and St Petersburg University. In 1889, he began his career at the Ministry of Finance. In 1902-1903, Pokrovsky was a deputy chairman (chairman from 1904) of the Department of Taxation of the Ministry of Finance. In 1906, he was appointed deputy finance minister and mainly oversaw taxation affairs. In 1914-1916, Pokrovsky was a member of the State Council (retaining his post of the deputy finance minister until July 1914). From January to November 1916, Pokrovsky held the post of state inspector.

On 30 November 1916 (N.S) he was appointed minister of foreign affairs. He succeeded Boris Stürmer, in favour of a peace treaty with Germany. Some of the English newspapers regarded his nomination as a sign of final suppression of Germanophilic agitation in Russia; a defeat for Rasputin and his friends. On his first speech in the Duma on 2 December Pokrovsky announced in the Imperial Duma that the treaty of 1915 with Great Britain and France (later signed by Italy, as well) had finally established Russia’s right on the straits and Constantinople. On 12 December the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, in a speech in the Reichstag, offered to open negotiations with the Entente in a neutral country. On 15 December Pokrovsky said that Russia would never sign a peace treaty with the Central Powers, which caused a storm of applause in the Duma.

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