The Russian historian and statesman Pavel Nikolayevich Miliukov (1859-1943) supported the Westernization and modernization of Russia while criticizing the ruthlessness and authoritarianism of its government.

Pavel Miliukov was born on Jan. 27, 1859, into a middle-class family in Moscow. He manifested an early interest in both history and politics. As a consequence of his independent views, he was suspended for a period of one year from the University of Moscow in 1881. He completed his formal training in the historical-philosophical faculty of Moscow University in 1886 and began the extensive archival research on his magisterial thesis, National Economy in Russia in the First Quarter of the XVIIIth Century and the Reforms of Peter the Great, which he defended successfully and published in 1892. In the meantime he began his teaching career as lecturer at the University of Moscow and as a secondary school teacher.

In the mid-1890s Miliukov became progressively more concerned...