Mikhail Loris-Melikov

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Count Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov (Template:Langx; Template:Langx; Template:OldStyleDate – 24 December 1888) was a Russian statesman of an Armenian origin who served as general of the cavalry and adjutant general of His Imperial Majesty's Retinue.

The princes of Lori, Loris-Melikov, are the representatives of an old noble family whose ancestors in the 14th century owned the town of Lori and the province of the same name. They belonged to the top aristocratic society of Georgia. The princely family of Loris-Melikov was established in the Russian nobility in 1832.

Biography

Early life

He was born in Tiflis, Caucasus Viceroyalty, Russian Empire, in 1826, into the Melikov family of Armenian origin,<ref>Melikovs // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron  : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg., 1890—1907.</ref> to Prince Tariel Zurabovich Loris-Melikov and his wife, Princess Ekaterina Ahverdova, and was educated in St Petersburg, first at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, and afterwards at the Guards' Cadet Institute. While at the Lazarev Institute, a practical joke against one of his instructors landed him in hot water and led to his expulsion from the school.<ref>Stephen Badalyan Riegg. Russia's Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020), p. 1.</ref>

He joined a hussar regiment, and four years afterwards (1847) he was sent to the Caucasus, where he remained for more than twenty years, and made for himself during troubled times the reputation of a distinguished cavalry officer and an able administrator. In the latter capacity, though a keen soldier, he aimed always at preparing the warlike and turbulent population committed to his charge for the transition from military to normal civil administration, and in this work, his favorite instrument was the schoolmaster.

Military career

Loris-Melikov first saw action against the forces of another power during the Crimean War. He served as the commander of a cavalry squadron on the Russo-Ottoman borderlands and took part in the battles at Bayandur, Aleksandropol, and Kars. He was recognized for his military exploits and promoted to major general.

During the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878, he served as the chief of staff of Grand Duke Michael. At the rank of adjutant-general, he was given command of the Aleksandropol Detachment on the frontier with the Ottoman (a force that amounted to 32 battalions, four squadrons, and 112 field guns).<ref>Bruce Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 80.</ref> After taking the fortress of Ardahan, he was repulsed by Ahmed Muhtar Pasha at Zevin, but subsequently defeated his opponent at Ajaria, took Kars by storm, and laid siege to Erzurum.<ref>S. O. Kishmishev, Voina v turetskoi Armenii, 1877-1878 g.g. (St Petersburg: Voennaia Tipografiia, 1884).</ref> For these services, he received the title of count. He was awarded the Order of Saint George of the second degree on October 27, 1877, for his service in Ajaria.

Civil administrator

Tombstone of Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov. Pantheon of St. Kevork Armenian Apostolic Church, Tbilisi, Georgia.

In the following year, Loris-Melikov became the temporary governor-general of the region of the Lower Volga to combat an outbreak of the plague. The measures he adopted proved so effectual that he was transferred to the provinces of Central Russia to combat the Nihilists and Anarchists, who had adopted a policy of terrorism and had succeeded in assassinating the governor of Kharkov.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

His success in this struggle has led to his appointment as chief of the Supreme Administrative Commission, which had been created in St Petersburg after the February 1880 assassination attempt on Alexander II to deal with the terrorist agitation in general.

Here, as in the Caucasus, he showed a decided preference for the employment of ordinary legal methods rather than exceptional extralegal measures, even after an attempt on his own life soon afterwards. He believed that the best policy was to strike at the root of the evil by removing the causes of popular discontent and recommended to the emperor, Alexander II, a large scheme of administrative and economic reforms. Alexander, who was beginning to lose faith in the efficacy of the simple method of police repression hitherto employed, lent a willing ear to the suggestion. When the Supreme Commission was dissolved in August 1880, he appointed Count Loris-Melikov as the minister of the Interior with exceptional powers.<ref>Riegg. Russia's Entangled Embrace, pp. 162-63.</ref>

The proposed scheme of reforms was at once taken in hand but was never to be carried out. The emperor signed a ukase creating several commissions, composed of officials and eminent private individuals, to prepare reforms in various branches of the administration, and while popular people's representatives from the Zemstvos were granted positions, they were not allowed to vote. The intellectuals of Russia derided these reforms as rubber-stamping and an unwillingness to put forward any substantial constitutional reforms. This ukase was designed and advocated by Loris-Melikov, and on the very day (13 March 1881) of its acceptance by the emperor, the emperor was assassinated. But after the assassination, Loris-Melikov hesitated about publishing the order for a popular commission, and waited for the new emperor, who turned out to be very opposed to the Constitution in Russia. Alexander III at once adopted a strongly anti-reformist policy.<ref>P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Krizis samoderzhaviia na rubezhe 1870-1880-x gg. (Moscow, 1964).</ref>

When the new emperor started to undo some of the reforms that his father, Alexander II, had promulgated, Loris-Melikov resigned and lived in retirement until he died in Nice on 22 December 1888.<ref>s.v. "Loris-Melikov, Mikayel," Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia.</ref>

Loris-Melikov is portrayed as a generally sympathetic character in Leo Tolstoy's historical novella on the Caucasian War in Hadji Murat.

Awards

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Foreign

Honorary Member Russian Academy of Sciences (29.12.1880).

Notes

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See also

References

Further reading

  • Wright, Patricia. "Loris-Melikov: Russia, 1880-1." History Today 24 (June 1974): pp. 413–419.

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