Council of Public Figures

a counterrevolutionary political organization of the Russian bourgeoisie. In August 1917, after the victory of the February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1917, the Council of Public Figures was founded in Moscow. Its main purpose was to establish a military-bourgeois dictatorship. The members of its permanent bureau, which became the headquarters of the counterrevolution throughout Russia, included the Constitutional Democrats P. N. Miliukov, V. A. Mak-lakov, and A. I. Shingarev, the Octobrist M. V. Rodzianko, the prominent industrialist P. P. Riabushinskii, the monarchists V. V. Shul’gin and S. I. Shidlovskii, General M. V. Alekseev, and Professor P. B. Struve. The members of the council helped prepare the Kornilov conspiracy.

After the triumph of the October Revolution of 1917, the Council of Public Figures supported the anti-Soviet activities of the counterrevolutionary leaders Admiral A. V. Kolchak and generals A. I. Denikin and N. N. Iudenich. Its representatives were among the leaders of underground counterrevolutionary groups throughout Russia—the National Center, the Tactical Center, and the Right Center. In 1920, after the defeat of the counterrevolutionary forces in the Civil War of 1918–20, the Council of Public Figures broke up. Several of its members were subsequently convicted by Soviet courts.