Pyotr Lvovich Bark (; ; 18 April 1869 – 16 January 1937), later Sir Peter Bark was a Russian government official and later a banker.
Biography
Bark was born in Novotroitskoye village in
Yekaterinoslav Governorate. He descended from a
Baltic-German family in
Estonia
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
. His father Karl Ludwig Bark (later Ludwig Genrikhovich after converting to the Russian Orthodox faith) was a forestry manager for the Royal forests.
After studying law at St. Petersburg university, Pyotr Bark entered the Credit Chancellery of the
Ministry of Finance in 1891. Later he acted as a private secretary to the governor of the
State Bank of Russia. In 1903 he went to Berlin to study banking with
Mendelssohn & Co. On his return he was appointed manager of the foreign department of the State Bank. Later he became deputy Governor of the State Bank.
He resigned from his post in 1907 to accept an appointment in the private
Volga-Kama Commercial Bank.
In 1911 Bark was appointed Assistant Minister of Commerce and Industry; In 1914 he was appointed Minister of Finance, replacing
Vladimir Kokovtsov. He served in that position throughout the First World War until the abdication of
Nicholas II.
Briefly detained by the
Provisional Government
A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, a transitional government or provisional leadership, is a temporary government formed to manage a period of transition, often following state collapse, revoluti ...
, he was soon released, after which he immigrated to the west. He held the position of Managing-Director of the
Anglo-International Bank based in London. He was knighted by King
George V of the United Kingdom in 1935 for his contributions to the banking industry.
Bark married Baroness Sofia Leopoldovna von Behr (1867–1957) and had two children: a daughter, Nina (1900–1975) and a son, Georgiy (1904–1936).
Bark died in
Aubagne
Aubagne (; according to the classic norm or according to the Mistralian norm) is a Commune in France, commune in the southern French Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône. In 2020, the commune was awarded three flowers by the ...
, France, and is buried in the Russian cemetery in Nice.
References
;Informational notes
;Citations
;Bibliography
* Harcave, Sidney. (2004). Count Sergei Witte and the Twilight of Imperial Russia: A Biography. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. (cloth)
* Kokovtsov, Vladimir. (1935). Out of My Past (translator, Laura Matveev). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
*
Bernard Pares. Sir Peter Bark. The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 16, No. 46 (Jul., 1937), pp. 189–193.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bark, Pyotr
1869 births
1937 deaths
Saint Petersburg State University alumni
Government ministers of Russia
Members of the State Council (Russian Empire)
Bankers from the Russian Empire