WITTE, SERGEY YULYEVICH, COUNT°

WITTE, SERGEY YULYEVICH, COUNT° (1849–1915), Russian statesman. Between 1892 and 1903 he was finance minister and exerted much influence in the economic and foreign policies of Russia. In 1894 he introduced the government monopoly in the alcoholic liquors trade, a measure which removed within a few years tens of thousands of Jewish families from this branch of the economy. Witte was opposed to the aggressive policy of Russia in the Far East and, after the defeat of the Russian army in 1904, led the delegation which signed the Peace Treaty of Portsmouth with Japan (1905). He was among the advocates of the Constitution of October 1905 and headed the Council of Ministers until April 1906. As a result of these activities and his efforts to obtain foreign loans, Witte met with Jews both in Russia and western Europe, as well as in America. He criticized the discriminatory policy and spoke against the persecution of the Jews, which he believed was responsible for the active participation by Jews in the Russian revolutionary movement and the difficulties encountered by the Russian government in its foreign policy and on the international financial market. When herzl visited St. Petersburg, during the summer of 1903, he conferred with Witte on the subject of obtaining authorization for issuance of shares in Russia by the Jewish Colonial Trust. During his last years Witte wrote his memoirs (3 vols., 1922–23), which contain material on the economic and political history of the Jews in Russia. (Yehuda Slutsky)