Nikolai Markov

Nikolai Yevgenyevich Markov ( _ru. Николай Евгеньевич Марков) (2 April 1866-25 April 1945, Wiesbaden) [http://www.rusk.ru/st.php?idar=11341 Марков Николай Евгеньевич (1866-1945)] by Roman Romov ru icon ] was a Russian right wing political figure who was a leading figure in the Union of the Russian People (UPR).

Born in Kursk, Markov came from a land-owning background but was also a trained engineer. He entered politics in 1905 when he formed a defence group for the upper middle classes called the Party of Civil Order, whilst also starting the journals "Kurskaia Byl"' and "Zemschchina".Philip Rees, "Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890", p. 255] He became a founder of the UPR and was noted as its most formidable leader, using his membership of the State Duma of the Russian Empire to attack both capitalism and socialism, as well as launching frequent attacks on the Jews, whom he predicted would be wiped out in a mass pogrom.

He became URP leader in 1910 following the departure of Aleksandr Dubrovin and his followers and took over editorship of the pro-Vladimir Purishkevich journal "Vestnik Soyuza Russkogo Naroda". He used his position to argue for a restoration of absolutism and in the First World War supported a separate peace treaty between Russia and Germany, even attempting to get the Germans involved in a conspiracy to save the House of Romanov after the revolutions.

He fled to Germany following the October Revolution and set up the émigré Russian Monarchist Union, although he became more associated with the far right of the monarchist movement when he expressed his admiration for Italian fascism. He conspired to have Cyril of Coburg crowned Tsar, a man whose wife, Viktoria Feodorovna, was close to far right former German Imperial Army general Erich Ludendorff. [Walter Laqueur, "Russia and Germany: A Century of Conflict", 1990, p. 74] Markov also played a leading role in the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of Constitutional Democratic Party politician Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.

He published his memoirs, "Voiny Temnykh Stil", in 1928 and soon thereafter became a follower of the Nazi Party. He would go on to argue that the URP had shared many characteristics with the Nazi Party, although this has been rejected given that the URP was little more than anti-Semitic populism. [H. Rogger, "Jewish Policies and Right Wing Politics in Imperial Russia", 1986] His anti-Semitism grew more pronounced in the 1930s and he undertook lecture tours and propaganda duties for the Nazis on the subject.

References