Kornilov, Aleksandr

Born Nov. 18 (30), 1862, in St. Petersburg; died in 1925. Russian historian and writer. After graduating from the University of St. Petersburg, he served as commissioner for peasant affairs in the Kingdom of Poland and later (until 1900) as officer in charge of peasant affairs under the governor-general in Irkutsk.

For his participation in the protest of 42 writers against the beating of young people in the Kazan Cathedral Square in St. Petersburg, he was banished to Saratov in April 1901. In 1904 he lived in Paris and worked on the editorial board of P. B. Struve’s journal Osvobozhdenie (Liberation). Returning to Russia, he helped found the Constitutional Democrat (Cadet) Party, serving as secretary of its Central Committee from 1905 to 1908. He was appointed a professor at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute in 1909, where he gave a series of lectures entitled Course on the History of Russia in the Nineteenth Century (parts 1-3, 1912-14). Kornilov’s works on the history of 19th-century Russia include monographs on the social movement of the 1830’s through 1850’s and the peasant reform of 1861.