Nikolay Milyutin - Early Life

Early Life

Nikolay Milyutin was born in Moscow on June 6, 1818, the scion of an influential, but impoverished, aristocratic Russian family. He was the nephew of Count Pavel Kiselev, the most brilliant Russian reformer of Nicholas I's reactionary reign. Milyutin's brothers were Vladimir Milyutin (1826–55), a social philosopher, journalist and economist, and Dmitry Milyutin (1816–1912), who served as Minister of War under Alexander II.

Milyutin's formative years were spent on his father's estate, Titovo, in Kaluga Oblast. Slaves – or serfs, as they were known in Russia – worked the land at Titovo, while Milyutin's father occupied most of his time hunting and carousing with friends. Milyutin's mother was left to oversee most aspects of life on their estate. According to Milyutin, there were so many serfs at Titovo that "to list all would be impossible." While Milyutin largely omitted the more unsavory aspects regarding life at Titovo from his published memoirs, an unpublished draft, detailing his childhood, discusses the brutality with which his father treated his serfs. On one occasion Milyutin witnessed his father "mercilessly" flog one their serfs, as he later explained: "But thus were the mores in those times: a good landowner considered unavoidable to keep his serfs in line." Afterwards, as was then common practice, the serf was made to come and "thank the master" for having administered his "lesson." The incident left an indelible impression on Milyutin's young mind.