Nikolay Milyutin

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Nikolay Alekseyevich Milyutin (1818—1872) was a Russian statesman remembered as the chief architect of the great liberal reforms undertaken during Alexander II's reign, including the emancipation of the serfs and the establishment of zemstvo.

Nikolay Milyutin was the nephew of Count Pavel Kiselev, the most brilliant Russian reformer of Nicholas I's reactionary reign. His brothers were Vladimir Milyutin (1826-55), a social philosopher and journalist, and Dmitry Milyutin (1816-1912), one of the great military leaders of the 19th-century Russia.

Nikolay graduated from the Moscow University and joined the Ministry of the Interior in 1835. A man of liberal views who sympathized with the Slavophile cause, young Milyutin helped reform the municipal administration in St Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa in the 1840s.

As an Assistant Minister of Interior since 1859, he succeeded in defending his vision of ambitious liberal reforms against attacks by conservatives and disconcerted nobility. The Emancipation Manifesto of 1861 was largely drafted by him.

During the January Uprising he was dispatched to Poland in order to implement his reforms there. He devised an effective program of Russification, which involved the emancipation of the peasantry at the expense of the nationalist landowners and the expulsion of Roman Catholic priests from schools.

Milyutin resigned his office in 1866 after having suffered a stroke and spent the rest of his life in seclusion.