Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov
Prince Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov (Russian: Михаил Семёнович Воронцов, scientific transliteration Mikhail Semenovic Voroncov; * 19 Maijul / May 30 1782greg in Saint Petersburg, .. .. † 6 Novemberjul / November 18 1856greg in Odessa) was a Russian officer and politicians. He was Field Marshal of the Russian armed forces under Wellington, Governor-General of New Russia and Bessarabia, as well as Viceroy of the Caucasus. He championed liberal ideas, modernized Southern Russia and the South Caucasus.
Life
He spent his childhood and youth in Venice and England, where his father was of Russia as a diplomat. There he received a broad education to the humanities and natural sciences as well as included the visit of the English Parliament and of factories. Because the father figured also in Russia with a bourgeois revolution and the abolition of aristocratic privileges, the son also had to learn a craft.
1801 Vorontsov returned back to Russia. After a year as a lieutenant in the Life Guards Preobrazhensky of the Regiment, he served in the Russian army in the Caucasus, fought against the Swedes in Pomerania, on the Danube and in Ruschtschuk against the Turks. In 1805 he was Major, Colonel 1807, Major General in 1810. In 1812 he defended in the Battle of Borodino the Schewardinskij Hills against the French army. Vorontsov distinguished himself in the Battle of Leipzig and at the Battle of Craonne against Napoleon. In 1813 he became lieutenant-general commander of the Russian forces in the army of the Duke of Wellington.
1820 back in Moscow, Vorontsov joined the liberal movement in Russia. Already as an officer he had written a memorandum to decent treatment of the lower ranks. Now he suggested Tsar Alexander I. a society for the liberation of the serfs. The Tsar refused.
1823 went Vorontsov as Governor General of Noworossia and Bessarabia in today's Ukraine, took the seat is in Odessa and a private residence in Alupka in Crimea. He earned great merit in the development of Odessa into a modern port city, dedicated Western European engineers and doctors, pushed to urban projects. He founded a theater, a public library, a lyceum, an Institute of Oriental Languages and various scientific societies, patronized English and French local newspapers.
Under his rule, the population of the Russian South grew because it was known that he did not pursue runaway serfs. Refugees soon found work in the expanding economy of the ports on the Black Sea. Between 1823 and 1849, the population of Odessa doubled. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin praised the freedom of the city.
1844 Vorontsov was appointed Viceroy of the Caucasus, was awarded the title of prince. Despite advanced stage of age, he had also earned in the South Caucasus contributions to the development of culture, commerce, industry and the transport sector, although he did in the fight against the Chechens suffered setbacks. Such a delegated by him army was repulsed in 1845 by the Chechens to Imam Shamil. In contrast to his military measures, the procedure initiated by him infrastructural net winding width of the Caucasus region was successful. In 1848 he undertook the Italian Giovanni Scudieri as chief architects of Tiflis. In the same year he founded the first theater in Tbilisi in Transcaucasia, in 1846 the first public library. Go back to him countless educational institutions and learned societies, including the first magazine in Georgian Ziskari, the Ethnographic Museum, a branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. His palace (now the Palace of Youth ) is still a jewel in the center of the Georgian capital.
Vorontsov's goal was to bring the areas it manages to Europe to take care of an enlightened education, to provide private capital and to stimulate private investment for the exploitation of natural resources in the regions. This contributed indirectly also contribute to the suppression of the Chechen resistance in 1859.
1855 Vorontsov retired. In 1856 he was appointed by Tsar Alexander II to field marshal. In the same year he died in Odessa and was buried there.
Vorontsov was with Elizaveta Ksawerewna Branizkaja, a relative of Prince Potemkin, married and was considered one of the richest men in Russia.