Peter Palchinsky

Peter Akimovich Palchinsky (Russian: Пётр Иоаки́мович (Аки́мович) Пальчи́нский; 1875–22 May 1929) was a Russian engineer who played a significant role in the introduction of scientific management into Russian industry.

Peter was born in Kazan, a city on the Volga river in Tatarstan. He was the oldest son of five children. He grew up with his mother in the Volga river city of Kazan. He developed an early interest in science which led him to enroll as a student at the Mining Institute in St Petersburg in 1893. This was one of the elite engineering institutions of Tsarist Russia. There he mixed with leading Russian scientists and was introduced to radical politics.

In 1901 Palchinsky was recruited by the Russian government to investigate the living conditions of workers in the coal mines of the Don Basin; however, his criticism of the workers' living conditions was not well received. Shortly after the Revolution of 1905 Palchinsky became interested in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which at the time was the largest party in Russia. He sympathized with the moderate wing of the party and was sharply critical of the radicals. He was implicated in the 1905 effort of the revolutionaries to declare a separate democratic. It is not clear if he was an active participant in the movement or just a sympathizer. Because there was no hard evidence to convince the Russian government that Palchinsky had an active role in the movement, he was not brought to trial, but instead exiled under the emergency powers granted to the police during revolutionary turmoil.

He emigrated from Russia moving to London, Turin and Rome. In 1911 he directed the mining department of the World Industrial Exhibition in Turin.

After his 8-year exile, Palchinsky and his wife returned to their native land in 1913. He was deputy chair of the Imperial Russian Central War Industry Committee during the First World War. After the February Revolution in 1917 he held several positions in the provisional government. While probably not a formal member, he associated himself with the moderate wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and supported the war effort against Germany. In 1917, Bolsheviks arranged for a takeover of the provincial government and imprisoned ministers and other officials of the Provisional Government including Palchinsky.

...
Wikipedia