Vyacheslav von Plehve
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Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve (Вячесла́в Константи́нович фон Пле́ве), also Pléhve, or Pleve (20 April [O.S. 8 April] 1846 in Meshchovsk, Kaluga Guberniya – 28 July [O.S. 15 July] 1904 in St Petersburg) was the director of Tsarist Russia's police and later Minister of the Interior.
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He came from a German noble family and was raised in Warsaw. After studying law at Moscow University, he became a prosecutor's assistant in 1867 and served in various positions in the Ministry of Justice. In 1881, he investigated the murder of Alexander II and then joined the MVD as a Director of the Department of Police, also in charge of Okhrana. He became a member of the Governing Senate in 1884 and Deputy of the Minister in 1885. Made an Actual Privy Counsellor in 1899, he was Finnish Minister Secretary of State from that year until 1904.
He is credited with the destruction of numerous revolutionary groups. It appears Pléhve did not see a difference in degrees of opposition, and his actions forced the unification of ideological enemies in the Osvoboditel'noe dvizhenie - a significant force in the 1905 "disturbances".[citation needed]
In April 1902, following the assassination of Dmitry Sipyagin, he was appointed Minister of the Interior and Chief of Gendarmes. After a brief attempt at conciliation with the zemstvo conservatives failed, he relapsed - disbanding the police-supported labour unions (zubatovshchina).[citation needed]
In 1902 he also met with Theodor Herzl in Saint Petersburg as part of Herzl's strategy of seeking an alliance with influential anti-Semites, in the hope that they would regard Zionism as a convenient way of "getting rid" of the unwanted Jews in their countries.[1]
Plehve was an obvious target for revolutionaries. After he did nothing to prevent a bloody wave of anti-Jewish violence in 1903, the known double agent Evno Azef decided not to inform on SR plans to kill Plehve. He survived one attack in 1903 and two in 1904 before the Socialist-Revolutionary Combat Group succeeded. On 15 July 1904 a bomb was thrown into Plehve's carriage by Yegor Sozonov, in Saint Petersburg, killing him. He was 58 years old.
Plehve had used his position as Minister of Interior to insist that the assassin of Vilna's governor, Victor von Wehle, Hirsh Lekert, be tried under wartime law, which virtually guaranteed a death sentence.[2]
Plehve was traditionally believed to be the architect of the Russo Japanese War. Plehve was reputed to have said: "We need a small, victorious war to avert a revolution." However, recent research has shown that this verdict rests upon misinformation deliberately spread by Sergei Witte.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ "Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion and the Holocaust" article (in Hebrew) on the The Israeli Classical Liberal Website[1]
- ^ Hirsz Abramowicz, Eva Zeitlin Dobkin, Dina Abramowicz, Jeffrey Shandler, David E. Fishman, Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, "Profiles of a lost world: memoirs of East European Jewish life before World", Wayne State University Press, 1999, p. 141, [2]
| Preceded by Dmitry Sergeyevich Sipyagin |
Minister of Interior 1902 – 1904 |
Succeeded by Prince Pyotr Dmitrievich Sviatopolk-Mirskii |
| Preceded by Victor Napoleon Procopé |
Finnish Minister Secretary of State 1899 – 1904 |
Succeeded by Edvard Oeström |
