Alexander Bekleshov

Born March 12, 1743; son of the Captain Lieutenant of the Fleet Andrei Bogdanovich Bekleshev and his wife Anna Yuryevna, née Golenishcheva–Kutuzova.[1]

In 1756, he was admitted to the Land Cadet Corps. He knew several foreign languages. In 1769, he was accepted into the service of the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment. Member of the Russian–Turkish War of 1768–1774: he was in the archipelago campaign under the command of Count Alexei Orlov and on July 26, 1770, fought in the Battle of Chesme.[1]

In 1773, he was transferred to the army as a colonel; on May 5, 1779, he was appointed Major General as commander of the Shlisselburg Infantry Regiment.

In 1783, with the rank of major general, he retired from military service; appointed by Catherine II as governor of Riga. Was in this post for about six years; proved to be the best. As a reward for his work in organizing the Riga Governorship, in 1784, Bekleshov was awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir, 2nd Class, and on April 14, 1789, he was promoted to lieutenant general.

In 1789, Alexander Bekleshev became the Governor–General of the Oryol and Kursk Governorships. For his General–Governor's service, which lasted until the end of the reign of Catherine II, he was awarded the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky.

The reign of Paul I, which began in 1796, was marked by frequent and sudden personnel changes. Opals and awards, appointments and dismissals alternated each other. Alexander Andreevich managed to be the Military Governor of Kamenets–Podolsky and the Governor–General of Little Russia for three years, the Military Governor of Kiev and simultaneously the Chief of the Kiev Grenadier Regiment and Inspector of the Ukrainian Division. During this service he was promoted to the rank of General of Infantry; at the same time he was granted the civil rank of real privy councillor.

Since June 7, 1799 – in the retinue of the emperor and a member of the Imperial Council. A month later, a new appointment followed – the Prosecutor General, with the award of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. When Alexander Bekleshev was appointed to this position, the emperor said: "You and I, I and you – forward we will do things alone".[2]

But Bekleshev stayed in this position for a little more than six months: on February 2, 1800, an unexpected disgrace followed with removal from public service altogether. Mikhail Speransky subsequently noted that Bekleshev "had little respect for the demands of random people at court and therefore often fell out with them".[3]

In the very first days after the accession to the throne of Alexander I, on March 16, 1801, Alexander Andreevich was returned to the service and reinstated in the position of Prosecutor General, which he held until the reform of public administration. During the coronation of the new monarch, he was awarded the Order of Saint Andrew the First–Called. Alexander Bekleshev, due to conservative convictions, did not share the reformist ardor of the emperor; with the establishment of ministries (September 8, 1802) and the combination of the posts of the Prosecutor General and the Minister of Justice, he was resigned.

In April 1804, he received a new appointment – the Governor–General of Moscow, but did not stay in his new position for long: two years later, for health reasons, Alexander Bekleshev left the service in senior positions.[4] The recognition of state merits was the award of diamond badges of the Order of Saint Andrew the First–Called.

He died suddenly in Riga on August 5, 1808; buried at the city Pokrovsky Cemetery. He was not married, but raised his adopted (illegitimate) son Alexei, who died during the Patriotic War of 1812 at the age of 22.[3]

Mikhail Speransky, evaluating the prosecutor generals of the Pavlovian time, wrote: "Bekleshev was smarter than all of them, but also more unhappy than all of them – he did not succeed; Obolyaninov had the least ability of all of them, and he got away with everything".[1] A favorable opinion was about Bekleshov and Prince Adam Chartoryisky:

He was a man of the old Russian party, rude in appearance, but who, under a very rude appearance, kept a truthful heart, firm and compassionate to the misfortunes of others. His reputation as a noble man was well established... He resisted, as far as he could, theft, abuse, deceit. He could not stand his attorneys abusing justice for their own gain. He emerged clean and unblemished from this ordeal, surrounded by the gratitude of the locals. There are very few such examples among the highest dignitaries.[3]

Alexander Bekleshev always showed a favorable attitude towards the Jews. In 1797, he appealed to the Senate with a request that in the Volyn and Podolsk Regions, Jews not be subordinate to landowners, but to magistrates, in which they would sit on equal terms with Christians. In 1802, as a member of the State Council, he spoke out against the prohibition of Jews to trade in the capitals and inland provinces.[5]

• Bekleshov, Alexander Andreevich // Russian Biographical Dictionary: in 25 Volumes – Saint Petersburg, 1900 – Volume 2: Alexinsky – Bestuzhev–Ryumin – Pages 671–673
• Bekleshov, Alexander Andreevich // Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron – Saint Petersburg, 1909 – Volume 4 – Column 49
• Bekleshovs // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 Volumes (82 Volumes and 4 Additional Ones) – Saint Petersburg, 1891 – Volume III – Pages 354–355
• Moscow: Encyclopedia / Editor–in–Chief Sigurd Schmidt; Compilers: M. I. Andreev, V. M. Karev – Moscow: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1997 – 976 Pages – 100,000 Copies – ISBN 5-85270-277-3
• Alexander Andreevich Bekleshov // Kievan Antiquity – Volume XXVIII – January–March 1890 – Pages 255–304
• Vladimir Ikonnikov. Alexander Andreevich Bekleshev – Kiev, 1890
• Vladimir Ikonnikov. Alexander Bekleshev, Little Russian Military Governor–General – Kiev, 1890

• Vladimir Stepanov. Governor–General Bekleshov – All Smarter and More Unfortunate
• Website of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation