Pavel Ryabushinsky

Who was Pavel Ryabushinsky?

Pavel Pavlovich Ryabushinsky, was a Russian entrepreneur and liberal politician.

Ryabushinsky was born into an Old Believer family that had prospered in the 19th century; like other scions of such merchant families, he had a good education and was anxious both to be accepted into high society and to improve his country. In 1907 he began publishing his own newspaper, Utro Rossii, to propagate his liberal views. Rebuffed by the Constitutional Democrats, who did not want to be associated with the "narrow class interests" of industrialists, he and his fellow Old Believer Alexander Konovalov established contact with the "Right Kadets" associated with Peter Struve and began the Economic Discussions of 1909-12, "one of the few sustained collaborations between entrepreneurs and intellectuals in Russian history". He and Konovalov founded the Progressist Party, which in 1915 became part of the Progressive Bloc; that same year he was elected Chairman of the Moscow Stock Exchange Committee and was appointed to head the Military-Industrial Committee. After the February Revolution he opposed the Soviet and the participation of socialists in the Provisional Government; following the failure of the Kornilov Affair, which he supported, he withdrew from politics and went to the Crimea for a tuberculosis cure. After the October Revolution he was accused of giving financial support to the All-Russian Teachers' Union, who had refused to continue to work under Bolshevik instruction. He subsequently emigrated to France, where he continued to hope he and his entrepreneurial class might eventually prove useful to his native country.