Bobrinskii Family

major Russian landowners and sugar manufacturers; Russian counts.

The Bobrinskii family owned vast estates in Tula, Kiev, and other provinces. Their sugar plants in Kiev Province were among the largest in Europe; they owned and held stock in a number of enterprises in distilling, flour-milling, mining, and other industries. The family held a leading position in the monopoly associations of Russian sugar manufacturers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and had links with banking circles. After the Revolution of 1905–07, they were prominent in Russian reactionary political parties.

Aleksei Grigor’evich Bobrinskii. Born 1762; died 1813. The family’s founder was a natural son of Empress Catherine II andG.G. Orlov.

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Bobrinskii. Born 1852; died 1927. He became chairman of the Council of the United Nobility in 1906 and was marshal of the nobility of St. Petersburg Province, a senator, and member of the Imperial Council from 1912. He was a deputy in the Third Imperial Duma, a member of the right wing. On the eve of World War I, 1914–18, he was chairman of the board of the Russo-British bank. During the war he was deputy minister of internal affairs and minister of agriculture (1916). After the Great October Revolution, he was a member of the monarchist Council of the State Unification of Russia. He emigrated in 1919.

Vladimir Alekseevich Bobrinskii. Born 1868; date of death unknown. He was a deputy in the Second, Third, and Fourth Imperial Dumas. In the Second Duma he was one of the leaders of the moderate right. In the Third Duma he was an active partisan of P. A. Stolypin. He was one of the organizers (1909) of the nationalist faction and an ardent proponent of the Russification policy in Russia’s national regions and of an aggressive foreign policy. In the Fourth Duma, he signed the program of the Progressive Bloc in the name of the nationalists. After the October Revolution he was a member of the Council of State Unification of Russia. He emigrated in 1919.