Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov

See also: Mikhail Muravyov

Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muraviev (Михаил Николаевич Муравьёв in Russian) (April 19, 1845 - June 21, 1900) was a Russian statesman who advocated transfer of Russian foreign policy from Europe to the Far East. He is probably best remembered for having initiated the Hague Peace Conference.

Mikhail Muraviev was the son of General Count Nicholas Muraviev (governor of Grodno), and grandson of the Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muraviev, who became notorious for his drastic measures in stamping out the Polish insurrection of 1863 in the Lithuanian provinces. He was educated at a secondary school at Poltava, and was for a short time at Heidelberg University.

In 1864 he entered the chancellery of the minister of foreign affairs at St.Petersburg, and was soon afterwards attached to the Russian legation at Stuttgart, where he attracted the notice of Queen Olga of Württemberg. He was transferred to Berlin, then to Stockholm, and back again to Berlin. In 1877 he was second secretary at the Hague. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 he was a delegate of the Red Cross Society in charge of an ambulance train provided by Queen Olga of Württemberg.

After the war he was successively first secretary in Paris, chancellor of the embassy in Berlin, and then minister in Copenhagen. In Denmark he was brought much into contact with the imperial family, and on the death of Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky in 1897 he was appointed by the Tsar Nicholas II to be his minister of foreign affairs.

The next three and a half years were a critical time for European diplomacy. The Chinese and Cretan questions were disturbing factors. As regards Crete, Count Muraviev's policy was vacillating; in China his hands were forced by Germany's action at Kiaochow. But he acted with singular regret with regard at all events to his assurances to Britain respecting the leases of Port Arthur and Talienwan from China; he told the British ambassador that these would be open ports, and afterwards essentially modified this pledge.

When the Tsar Nicholas inaugurated the Peace Conference at the Hague, Count Muraviev extricated his country from a situation of some embarrassment; but when, subsequently, Russian agents in Manchuria and Peking connived at the agitation which culminated in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the relations of the responsible foreign minister with the tsar became strained. Muraviev died suddenly on June 21, 1900 of apoplexy, brought on, it was said, by a stormy interview with the tsar.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

See also: Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, 1845, 1864, 1877, 1897, 1900, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski