Nikolai Vissarionovich Nekrasov

Nikolai Vissarionovich Nekrasov (Russian: Никола́й Виссарио́нович Некра́сов) (November 1 [O.S. October 20] 1871, Saint Petersburg – May 7, 1940, Moscow) was a Russian liberal politician and the last Governor-General of Finland.

Born in the family of a priest, Nekrasov graduated with a degree in transportation engineering in 1902 and went abroad for graduate studies. After returning to Russia in 1904, he became a professor at the Tomsk Engineering Institute. In late 1905, at the height of the Russian Revolution of 1905, he helped found the Constitutional Democratic Party (aka the Kadet party) and headed its regional office in Yalta, Crimea. He was elected to the 3rd (1907) and 4th (1912) State Dumas.

Between 1909 and 1915, Nekrasov was a member of the Kadets' Central Committee, where he was consistently Left of center. He delivered the Kadets' parliamentary interpellation on April 9, 1912 after the Lena massacre, denouncing what he described as the government's illegal interference in an economic dispute between labor and capital on the side of the latter. Later in 1912 Nekrasov argued that "constructive work" within the Duma had been made impossible by the Tsarist government and that the party should be more confrontational and use the Duma for anti-government propaganda instead of lawmaking. On June 11, 1915 he resigned from the Central Committee over what he saw as the majority's willingness to give the government a blank check during World War I.

On November 6, 1916, Nekrasov was elected deputy Chairman of the Duma. At the same time, convinced that Emperor Nicholas II and his court were leading the country down the road to a military defeat and revolution, Nekrasov began plotting with former Duma Chairman Octobrist Alexander Guchkov, Kerensky, Alexander Ivanovich Konovalov and industrialist Mikhail Tereschenko to force Nicholas to abdicate. Nicholas’ 13-year-old son, Alexei, would then assume the throne and Nicholas' more liberal brother, Grand Duke Michael, would become Regent. Their plans were still in progress when the February Revolution of 1917 made them moot.

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