Maklakov, Vasily Alekseyevich

▪ Russian politician

born May 10 [May 22, New Style], 1869

died July 15, 1957, Zürich, Switz.

      liberal Russian political figure and a leading advocate of a constitutional Russian state.

      Maklakov was the son of a Moscow professor. He was impressed by French political life during a visit to Paris in 1889 and spent most of his career attempting to establish a similar system in Russia. Entering the bar in 1895, he joined a moderate reform group in 1903 and played an active part in the organization of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadet) two years later, serving on its central committee. He was elected to the second state Duma (parliament) in 1907 and served in the subsequent Dumas until the Revolution of 1917. A respected orator and a voluminous writer, he tended toward conservatism, opposing alliances with revolutionaries. But he grew hostile to the government as the years passed and actively supported the Progressive Bloc, a coalition of liberal parties in the fourth Duma that called for sweeping reforms.

      The provisional government sent him as ambassador to France just prior to the takeover by the Bolsheviks. Later he was prominent among Russian emigrés in Paris, writing several books on the history of social thought and the Russian liberal movement.

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