July 6, 1866
В Novgorod province, born into the family of a justice of the peace Alexey Putilov - industrialist and financier.
He was the great-nephew of an entrepreneur, mechanical engineer and metallurgist To Nikolai Putilov (to the owner of the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg).
After graduating from law school, he served in the Ministry of Finance, where he was noticed Sergey Witte (He headed the ministry in 1892). In 1905, after Witte's appointment as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he became Deputy Minister of Finance. He participated in the preparation of the "Stolypin" agrarian reform.
A radical restructuring of the entire administrative mechanism of Russia is necessary.
He warned the tsar against neglecting the problems of peasants and workers. In 1905, it was a strike at the Putilov factory that began "Bloody Sunday" (and in 1917, the February Revolution would begin with workers at the same factory).
He proposed to forcibly buy out land from landowners in order to expand peasant landholdings. Nicholas II considered the idea too revolutionary.
In 1906, after Witte's resignation, he also left government service. He became the "crisis manager" of the unprofitable Russo-Chinese Bank and, within two years, transformed it into a thriving enterprise: thanks to successful stock market speculation, railway construction, and trade operations in Asia, the bank came to control and provide loans to approximately 160 enterprises.
He was one of the founders of the Russian General Oil Corporation holding company, which held controlling stakes in most Russian oil companies. He was chairman and board member of approximately 50 companies. By the start of the February Revolution, he had become a millionaire and one of the leading financiers and industrialists not only in Russia but also abroad.
He had a reputation as a financial genius, and his economic forecasts were considered the ultimate truth. Yet, he was ascetic in his daily life: even at high-level meetings, he showed up in a threadbare jacket, the lapels stained with cigar ash.
In the 1910s, he placed his bets on a military-industrial syndicate, uniting several factories—on the eve of the First World War, they produced almost all the field artillery and shells for the Russian army, as well as ships of the Baltic Fleet.
In 1916, he failed to reach an agreement with the striking workers of the Putilov factories and handed over the assets to the government (according to another version, the authorities helped suppress the strike by sending 2000 workers to the front, and later took over the enterprise).
He returned to politics, becoming a member of the St. Petersburg City Duma.
As early as 1915, he predicted the fall of the monarchy. He considered the new government after the February Revolution spineless.
From the bourgeois revolution we will immediately move on to a workers' revolution, and a little later to a peasant revolution. Then terrible anarchy will begin... We will see the times of Pugachev again, and perhaps even worse.
He was one of the founders of the anti-Bolshevik Society for the Economic Revival of Russia, which included prominent financiers and entrepreneurs. He supported Kornilova (there is a version that if the rebellion was successful, he could have received the post of Minister of Finance).
After the failure of the Kornilov rebellion, he left Petrograd. After the October Revolution he was declared an enemy of the people and his property was confiscated.
He lived in China and revived the Russo-Asian Bank through its foreign branches. During the Civil War, he assisted the White forces.
In 1921, according to one version, he held negotiations with the Soviet plenipotentiary representative Leonid Krasin On the creation of a Soviet-French bank of issue to assist the Bolsheviks in implementing monetary reform. In 1926, amid these rumors, the émigré press accused him of collaborating with the Soviet government. Putilov lost his position as chairman of the bank's board, and within a few months, under new management, it was declared bankrupt.
In 1937, he gave several interviews, which drew criticism from many of his surviving White comrades. After that, Putilov's trail disappears—researchers are hesitant to pinpoint the exact date of his death, generally citing the period from 1937 to the start of World War II.
According to one version, he died in 1940. paris, in 73. About a month before the German occupation.
