Paltov, Alexander Alexandrovich

He was born in 1867 in St. Petersburg in the family of the naval officer Paltov Alexander Ilyich who was married to the daughter of the Petersburg architect P. A. Chepyzhnikov .

In 1887 he graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University. After graduation, he joined the Ministry of Railways, which at that time was headed by S. Yu. Witte . For some time he was Witte's secretary, before taking the last post of prime minister. Being a native of an old noble family , the son and nephew of famous naval guard officers (one of his uncles commanded the Imperial yacht), he was introduced to the Court, receiving a court rank and continuing his service in the Ministry of Railways.

He turned out to be implicated in the money criminal case. A. A. Paltov received for the efforts to issue the rights of one of the companies to supply goods on the Ural Railway, 30,000 rubles. This money was spent on the internal reporting of the company and issued on a statement, however, during the audit by the State Auditor, the question was raised about the legality of such a service and a criminal case was opened, not against the company, but against A. A. Paltov. The case received a resonance due to the fact that Paltov, by this time, had the court rank of chamberlain. The leaders of the Ministry of Railways stood up for Paltov, however, he was forced to testify to the investigator. The solution to this question was postponed, at the direction of Nicholas II , until the end of the outbreak of the First World War. The uniform of Paltov was not lost. Continuing to serve as Director of the IPU Office.

During the First World War, he was a legal adviser to the management of the Galician-Bukovinian Railways. He was married to Olga Konstantinovna Kolzakova, had a daughter Ksenia (graduated from the Smolny Institute ) and a son Mikhail. Ksenia's daughter, according to some information in her second marriage, was married to one of the sons of an American millionaire businessman Henry Ford.

According to some information, a member of the Paris Masonic lodge.

The place and year of death of A. A. Paltov, not established.

His rapid career growth began after meeting with General Skoropadsky immediately before the hetman coup on April 29, 1918. During the organization of the coup against the Central Council , the future hetman discovered the need for a competent lawyer who would help him draw up a manifesto , the first appeal to the people. The leadership of the Ukrainian People’s Community, the party that supported the coup, pointed the general at Paltov. April 25, they first met. Skoropadsky designated Paltov the basic ideas that he would like to express in his "Certificate to the Ukrainian people."

Getman recalled:

“Then, on the same day, I met Alexander Alexandrovich Paltov ... I called him into a separate room, told him a plan of upcoming actions and the goals that I was going to pursue to establish hetmanism. He pointed out to him the basic thoughts that I wanted to carry out in my appeal to the people. He wrote down in rough form, went to his home and an hour and a half later returned to me with the completely finished basis of my Certificate. All that remained was to smooth and replace some of the expressions with more attractive ones.

I was struck by this clarity of mind and the speed of work in such a complex issue. So far, I have not had such assistants. I immediately suggested that he consider the question of what position he wanted to occupy in the event of a successful coup. He proposed to appoint him as assistant secretary of state, he agreed. I decided to bring him closer to me. Alexander Alexandrovich was with me for all the time of my hetmanism. ”

. The grandmother of A.A. Paltov on the father's side was Sofia Dmitrievna Durnovo. Thus, he was related to Skoropadsky’s wife, whose maiden name was Durnovo.

After a successful coup and the establishment of hetman power, Paltov became a state adviser and head of the government office. He takes an active part in the development of "Laws on the temporary state structure of Ukraine." As a monarchist , he tried to arrange in Ukraine some external semblance of a monarchy. Despite the resistance of the hetman himself, who considered himself only a temporary (until the Seimas convocation next year) dictator of Ukraine, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich partially succeeded. In the hetman’s palace, a magnificent ceremony was introduced, close to the ceremony of European royal courtyards, with Paltov’s filing, standards were set up for representatives of Skoropadsky’s surname. The entire period of the existence of the Ukrainian Power, Palt did not leave hope for its transformation into one form or another of the monarchy.

On May 3, 1918, A. Paltov was appointed comrade (deputy) of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Then the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the historian Professor Dmitry Ivanovich Doroshenko . However, Doroshenko did not do his job well enough. Regretting that he could not be replaced in this position, Pavel Petrovich reassured himself that it was Paltov who was his deputy. Ministry officials noticed that it was Paltov who was the de facto head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. An employee of the ministry N. Surovtseva noted that “Doroshenko seemed to have Paltov helping him, and at the same time he was modestly aloof. And I and all the ministerial employees had just the opposite opinion: Paltov worked, and Doroshenko stood very modestly next to him. ” Alexander Alexandrovich put a lot of effort into the formation of his ministry. In the shortest possible time, the states of Ukrainian foreign embassies and representative offices were established. By the fall of 1918, there were more than 30 Ukrainian diplomatic missions abroad, including in South America. The first agreements between Ukraine and Bolshevik Russia were reached - and although the signing of a peace treaty between the countries did not take place for various reasons (the Bolshevik delegation led by Rakovsky, as contemporaries noted, was more involved in agitation), the ministry nevertheless managed to agree on the organization of special "Sovereign trains" between Kiev and St. Petersburg, which were able to calmly and without obstacles in the summer and autumn of 1918 to take everyone out of the Council of Deputies. In July, negotiations began between the Ukrainian Power and the Great Don Army .

Paltov was mainly with the hetman, and from there he led the political line of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its new appointments. Hetman recalled that during the Hetman region, Ukraine ’s foreign policy “was in his hands, the hands of Paltov, and in part, Lizogub . ”

Describing Paltov, the director of the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency in his diary noted Paltov’s literal ubiquity: “Paltov does everything: organizes press bureaus, appoints bishops, and invents a new uniform for the army. In addition, constantly in conversations with the Germans . ” Being a Germanophile in himself, and also knowing several foreign languages, Paltov easily found a common language with the German command. The same Dontsov recalled that the German command often called the hetman and asked Paltov to resolve this or that issue or problem.

Hetman trusted his adviser. However, he recalled:

“Subsequently, because of Paltov, I had to experience a lot of trouble. I was told that he had some kind of monetary misunderstanding under the old government, that he was on trial. All this, perhaps, was - I do not know this. I affirm only one thing that during his time with me (he held the position of Comrade Minister of Foreign Affairs, with a secondment to me) is an outstanding person in his mind, in his broad comprehensive education, that he is amazingly efficient, balanced, always in place and that he was devoted to the work he served, and thereby to me. His past financial affairs are unknown to me. I think that having such a mind, if it were a truly unclean businessman, he would be able to make himself a great fortune, and he was poor. I am convinced that during the time of hetmanism he was not seen in anything reprehensible in this regard. When all sorts of envious people came to me with insinuations at Paltov’s address, not one of them could point me to any fact that discredited the latter. What he sometimes liked to eat, maybe, but when he managed to do it - I don’t know. Usually, until one in the morning he was in the Council of Ministers, who was sitting in the hetman’s house, and at eight in the morning he was already with me with ready papers. He really worked on creating Ukraine not for fear, but for conscience. He had no back thoughts, he always took the question broadly and boldly, did not crumple it and was not afraid of a new one, if it was appropriate. It had a wide scope, which, unfortunately, most of our ministers did not have. I appreciated it from the first day and I don’t change my opinion about it, although I know that many of me may be reproached for this. I will answer one thing to them: if you, gentlemen, someday will be in the conditions in which I was, wishing you well, I advise: take care of smart, educated, capable people to work, we can count them on the fingers . Do not find fault with trifles. Do not fumble in the past for your subordinates if at the moment they are valuable in their work. Thank you for this advice. ”

On August 17, 1918, together with the head of the Council of Ministers Lizogub Paltov went to negotiations in Germany (hetman adjutant Vasily Kochubey was the secretary), where he held several meetings and discussions on economic, trade, military, and political problems with the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs German Empire von Ginze. The visit had extremely favorable consequences for Ukraine. In particular, the formation of a national army and navy was finally resolved in favor of Ukraine.

A month later, in early September, Paltov accompanied the hetman, when he, at the invitation of Emperor Wilhelm, made his visit to Germany. This was the first visit of the head of independent Ukraine abroad. The Ukrainian delegation stayed at the Adlon Hotel , where Reich Chancellor Count Gertling arranged a magnificent reception in honor of the Ukrainian delegation. The same evening, the Ukrainian delegation solemnly arrived at Wilhelmsgöe Castle, where the German emperor was, who presented the members of the Ukrainian delegation with high state awards, and the Order of the Red Eagle to the hetman himself. The visit to Germany greatly contributed to the establishment of Ukraine in the international arena. A number of important government issues were resolved. In particular, new military agreements were reached, for example, on September 17, the Submarine Brigade consisting of 17 submarines was returned to the Ukrainian Sovereign Fleet.

The high role of Paltov in Ukrainian politics is evidenced by the fact that when the hetman went at the invitation of Prince Henry to Kiel, he did not take Paltov with him, but ordered him to deal with some important matters on his own. In particular, Paltov was instructed to study the features and influence of the German socialist parties on the political situation.

In October 1918, in the midst of a sharp turnaround on the fronts of World War II, the defeat of Bulgaria and the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Paltov became one of the ideologists of the Russophile trend in Ukrainian politics. He tried to find a reasonable compromise in the hetman’s conflict with the political opposition.

Realizing that after the summer events and cooperation with Germany, the Entente will at least be suspicious of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the hetman, for the sake of the possibility of establishing negotiations with representatives of the Entente, proclaims a federation with a future democratic Russia on November 14, 1918. At the same time, a new government was established, headed by S. N. Gerbel, in which there were neither secessionists nor Germanophiles. Accordingly, Paltov could not find a place in it. On November 20, Paltov himself petitioned for his resignation.

The further fate, as well as the date of the death of Alexander Alexandrovich Paltov, is unknown. According to unconfirmed reports, for some time he worked in the Foreign Ministry of Romania.

• Guy-Nizhnik P. Oleksandr Paltov - Defender of the Minister of Foreign Relations of the Ukrainian State (1918) // Ukraine is diplomatic. - VIP. XII. - K., 2011 .-- P.869–881.
• Hai-Nyzhnyk P. Oleksander Paltov, deputu Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Ukrainian State (1918) // Ukraina dyplomatychna (Diplomatic Ukraine). - K., 2011 .-- Is.XII. - P.868–881.
• Guy-Nizhnik P. “The Syrian Cardinal” of the hetman P. Skoropadsky (Narisi before the political portrait of O. O. Paltov) // Lyudina i politika. - 2004. - No. 3. - S.147-151.
• Skoropadsky P. Spogadi (quarter 1917 - chest 1918). - Kiev-Ladelphia, 1995.

• http://www.rus-sky.com/history/library/plat1-g.htm
• http://www.hai-nyzhnyk.in.ua/doc/2390doc.php