Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich 1827-1907
Russian jurist and politician

Born in Moscow, he was educated at home and at the Oldenburg School of Law in St Petersburg. Tutor, and later adviser, to Alexander III and Nicholas II, he became Professor of Civil Law at Moscow in 1858 and, as a member of a judicial commission in 1863, favoured liberal reforms in the law. However, after becoming procurator of the Holy Synod in 1866, he reacted against this, strongly opposing any westernizing changes in Russia and becoming the most influential as well as the most uncompromising champion of the autocracy and of the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was eventually forced to resign in 1905 in the midst of the revolution of that year, but he had by that time done considerable damage to the progress of normal constitutional change.