Emigré Journalism of Count V. N. Kokovtsov

Abstract

Before the Russian Revolution, Count V. N. Kokovtsov held two of the most important posts in the state administration of the Russian Empire: Minister of Finance (1904–1905, 1906–1914) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1911–1914). After emigrating in 1918, he took part in the struggle against Soviet power, mostly through his journalism. Quite a few of his works, which are devoted mainly to the economic development of Soviet Russia, were published in French and Russian periodicals from the early 1920s to the early 1930s. Kokovtsov analyzed military communism, the NEP, industrialization, and collectivization. In his opinion, Soviet power throughout its economic development was guided by the postulates of socialist doctrine and inflicted great damage on the national economy and thus created the preconditions for decline, famine, and mass discontent of the population. He also examined the problem of the tsarist government’s foreign debt, which the Bolsheviks refused to acknowledge. In an attempt to expose what he regarded as the criminal nature of the Soviet regime, Kokovtsov addressed such other matters as the execution of Nicholas II and his family, the repression of religion and the church, the destruction of the education system, the growing number of homeless children, and the decline of traditional family values. The Count offered a gloomy picture of the development of the USSR as a warning to bourgeois democratic countries about the danger of communist ideas and called on them to unite in order to protect Western civilization. His writings were instrumental in the formation of a negative image of the Communist regime in the West.