Frank Wcislo, “Tales of Imperial Russia: The Life and Times of Sergei Witte, 1849-1915” (Oxford UP, 2011)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Dec 2, 2011 · 1h 21m

When it comes to Russia’s great reformers of the nineteenth century, Count Sergei Witte looms large. As a minster to both Alexander III and Nicholas II, Witte presided over some of the most important economic and political developments in the Old Regime’s last quarter century. As Finance Minister he oversaw the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. As a diplomat, he was Russia’s chief negotiator of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty that ended his country’s disastrous war with Japan. As Prime Minister, Witte authored the October Manifesto which crowned a series of sweeping reforms of Russia’s…