WITTE, SERGEY YULYEVICH, GRAF

(Count) born June 29 [June 17, old style], 1849, Tiflis, Georgia, Russian Empire died March 13 [Feb. 28, O.S.], 1915, Petrograd Russian minister of finance (18921903) and first constitutional prime minister of the Russian Empire (190506), who sought to wed firm authoritarian rule to modernization along Western lines. Additional reading Theodore von Laue, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (1963), is the only study of Witte's career that is commensurate with the importance of the subject, ending with Witte's final fall from power in 1906 (includes a useful bibliography). The Memoirs of Count Witte, trans. and ed. by Abraham Yarmolinsky (1921), remains indispensable, though the emphasis is on Witte's career in 190506. The Memoirs in their Russian original were republished in one volume, ed. by A.L. Sidorov (1960).