Kutler, Nikolai

Kutler, Nikolai Nikolaevich 

Born 1859; died 1924. Russian political figure.

A lawyer by education, Kutler was director of a department at the Ministry of Finance from 1899 to 1904; from 1904 to 1905 he was deputy minister of internal affairs and finance. From 1905 to 1906 he was chief administrator of land allocation and agriculture, a post from which he resigned because his liberal plan for alienating privately owned lands was not accepted. A prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets) from 1906, Kutler was one of the authors of its agrarian program, a permanent contributor to the newspaper Rech’, and deputy to the Second and Third State Dumas from St. Petersburg. In 1917 he headed the Council of Congresses of Industry and Trade Representatives and other representative organs of the bourgeoisie and was on several commissions of the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution of 1917, Kutler aligned himself with the Soviet government and served in the People’s Commissariat of Finance and on the board of the State Bank.