Miliukov, Pavel

Miliukov, Pavel [Милюков, Павел; Miljukov], b 15 January 1859 in Moscow, d 31 March 1943 in Aix-les-Bains, France. Russian historian, publicist, and politician. Miliukov was a founding member of the influential Constitutional Democratic (kadet) party, and in 1907 he became its leader and was elected a member of the State Duma. In 1912–13 he conferred secretly with the Society of Ukrainian Progressives. In 1914 he condemned the actions of the tsarist occupational regime in Galicia; in 1915 he protested in the State Duma against the tsarist persecution of Ukrainians and defended the right of the Ukrainian movement to exist; and throughout the First World War he was a vocal critic of tsarist military policies.

After the February Revolution of 1917 Miliukov was the first minister of foreign affairs in the Russian Provisional Government. He was a defender of the indivisibility of the Russian Empire and thus an opponent of the Central Rada and of Ukrainian political autonomy. In 1919 he fled to Istanbul, and in 1920 he lived in London. In 1921 he settled in Paris, where he headed the émigré Republican Democratic Alliance and edited its organ, Poslednie novosti.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]