Alexei Khvostov

Aleksey Nikolayevich Khvostov (1 July 1872 – 23 August 1918) was a right-wing Russian politician and the leader of the Russian Assembly. He was a governor, a Privy Councillor (Russia), a chamberlain, a member of the Black Hundreds, and anti-German. He supported the Union of the Russian People. He was Minister of Interior for five months, opposed constitutional reforms and publicly accused Rasputin of spying for Germany. He had to resign after he planned to secretly have him eliminated. Life Khvostov was born in a noble family of land proprietors. After finishing the Imperial Alexander Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo, he became a student in Law. In 1898 he married Ekaterina Popova, the daughter of Alexander Popov (1835-1914), a senator. In 1904 he became vice governor of Minsk and later that year was appointed in Tula. In 1906 Khvostov became Vice Governor and then Governor of Nizhny Novgorod. When Pyotr Stolypin was murdered Grigori Rasputin paid him a visit in order of the Tsar "to look in his soul", but came to the conclusion he was too young to be appointed as minister. Also Count Kokovtsov protested. In 1906 it is believed that Khvostov participated in a massacre of peasants in the province of Chernihiv after they stole grain from a landowner as a result of the issuing of the Russian Constitution of 1906. This caused the Socialist-Revolutionists' Party to call for his assassination, a task that was placed upon Mariya Shkolnik and a comrade of hers by the name of Nicholai. The assassination of Khvostov failed after a bomb thrown by Nicholai failed to detonate, and Shkolnik's bomb failed to kill him. Shkolnik and Nicholai were sentenced to death following the attempted assassination, but their sentence was ultimately commuted to a life sentence of hard labor in the Transbaikal by Tsar Nicholas II.