Konovalov, Aleksandr Ivanovich

Born 1875; died 1948 in New York. Russian political figure, major textile factory owner.

Konovalov received his college education in England. He was a member of the Council of the Congresses of Representatives of Industry and Commerce. He was also one of the founders in 1917 of the All-Russian Union of Trade and Industry in Moscow, which collapsed in early 1918. Konovalov was a deputy and initially assistant chairman of the fourth State Duma. He was one of the organizers and later a leader of the Progressive Bloc of 1915. From 1915 to 1917 he was vice-chairman of the Central War Industries Committee. In the first two cabinets of the bourgeois Provisional Government, he was minister of trade and industry; in the last coalition, he also held the post of vice-premier under A. F. Kerensky. He was a Constitutional Democrat (Cadet) from August 1917 on. Konovalov financed the newspaper Utro Rossii. Together with other members of the Provisional Government, he was arrested on Oct. 25 (Nov. 7), 1917, in the Winter Palace, but he was soon freed. He was one of the organizers of the Kronstadt Anti-Soviet Revolt of 1921. He emigrated to France and was active in various anti-Soviet organizations.