Richelieu, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis duc de

Richelieu, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis duc de, b 25 September 1766 in Paris, d 17 May 1822 in Paris. French nobleman and statesman. He joined the Russian army in 1790 to fight the Turks at Izmail, and with the outbreak of the French Revolution he fought alongside the royalists (1793–4). He settled in the Russian Empire in 1795 and became governor of Odesa in 1803 and governor-general of so-called New Russia (Katerynoslav gubernia, Kherson gubernia, and Tavriia gubernia, plus Bessarabia gubernia from 1812) in 1805. He contributed significantly to the development of commerce, trade, and agriculture in the region and oversaw the transformation of Odesa from a village into a modern city. He encouraged the immigration of Germans, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Jews and helped to defend the population against the plague (1812). In 1814 Richelieu returned to France, where he served as minister of foreign affairs (1815–18) and prime minister (1820–1). The Richelieu Lyceum in Odesa (est 1817) was named after him, and a monument, by Ivan P. Martos, was erected in Odesa in his honor in 1828.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]