Dmitry Shipov

Dmitry Nikolaevich Shipov (14 May 1851 – 14 January 1920[citation needed]) was a Russian liberal Slavophile politician of the 19th and 20th centuries.

[1][2] According to Solzhenitsyn in “November 1916”, Shipov was not, or ought not to have been considered a ‘Slavophile’, a slandering term at the time assigned to him by his radically leftist opponents—one which appears to have ‘tarred’ him, inaccurately, to this day!"

He was one of the founders of Beseda in 1899, which was a clandestine discussion circle which consisted of some of the most prominent members of the Russian aristocracy, among them his friend Prince Georgy Lvov.

[7] He failed to persuade the Zemstvo Congress of appealing for a consultative rather than legislative representative parliament, and the motion was voted down three-to-one.

This caused a split in the liberal movement, between the majority going on to form Constitutional-Democratic Party ("Kadets"), and the minority founding the Union of October 17 ("Octobrists")[6] Shipov was one of the principal founders of the Octobrist Party, who uttered 'declarations of loyal support' to the Tsar and government in the wake of the Tsar's October Manifesto.

When the first cabinet government was to be gathered in October 1905, Sergey Witte offered Shipov the position of Ministry of Agriculture.