Memoirs of E.B. Voinovsky-Krieger as a source of knowledge on the Russian statehood

Abstract

E.B. Voinovsky-Krieger, a railroad engineer, held important positions in the state machine during the First World War, became the last Minister of Railroads in Tsarist Russia. Participating in the work of the government, meeting with the emperor, government ministers, deputies of the Russian parliament, he witnessed the crisis of the Russian statehood, the decline in the level of state administration, and the decrease in the quality of the work of the state bureaucracy. In his memoirs, written in 1925 in exile, he described in detail the state and society, bureaucracy, the root causes of the political crisis that led to the fall of the monarchy. The major part in the memoirs is the characteristics of the last Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, and his inner circle. The author draws attention to the moral state of the society, the role of the Russian intelligentsia in the life of the country, the issues of education, and the influence of the socialist ideas , brought from the West upon the minds of young people. E.B. Voinovsky-Krieger highly appreciated the state activity of P.A. Stolypin regretting that in the days of the severe trials of the First World War, there were no statesmen of such a level at the head of the country. In his opinion, the liberal Provisional Government, formed after the fall of the monarchy, was also not up to par. Instead of restoring law and order, the actions of the Provisional Government only exacerbated anarchy in the country and contributed to the establishment of a left-wing radical Soviet political system in Russia.