ARAKCHEYEV, AL E K S Y E I ANDREYEVICH, COUNT (1769-1834), Russian soldier and statesman,. was de scended from an ancient family of Great Novgorod. In July 1791 he was made an adjutant on the staff of Count N. I. Saltuikov, who recommended him to the tsarevich Paul Petrovich for reor ganizing the army corps maintained by the prince at Gatchina. Arakcheyev won the confidence of Paul by his zeal and technical ability. His inexorable discipline soon made the Gatchina corps a model for the rest of the Russian army. On the accession of Paul to the throne Arakcheyev was immediately promoted, and was entrusted with the reorganization of the army. He remorse lessly applied the iron Gatchina discipline to the imperial forces, beginning with the Preobrazhenskoe Guard, of which he was colonel. He soon became generally detested, but pursued his course unflinchingly and introduced many indispensable hygienic reforms. Nevertheless the opposition of the officers proved too strong for him, and on March 18 1798 he was dismissed from all his appointments. Arakcheyev's first disgrace only lasted six months. On Aug. 11 he was reinstated and on May 5 1799 was created a count, the emperor himself selecting the motto : "De voted, not servile." Five months later he was again dismissed, this time on the strength of a denunciation subsequently proved to be false.
During the earlier years of Alexander I., Arakcheyev was com pletely overlooked; but on April 27 1803 he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and employed as inspector-general of the artillery. His wise reorganization of the whole department contributed essentially to the victories of the Russians during the Napoleonic wars. The commissariat scandals which came to light after the peace of Tilsit convinced the emperor that nothing short of the stern and incorruptible energy of Arakcheyev could reach the sources of the evil, and in Jan. 1808 he was appointed inspector general and war minister. When, on the outbreak of the Swedish war of 1809, the emperor ordered the army to cross the ice of the Gulf of Finland, it was only the presence of Arakcheyev that compelled an unwilling general and a semi-mutinous army to be gin a campaign which ended in the conquest of Finland. On the institution of the "Imperial Council" (Jan. 1 181o), Arakcheyev was made a member of the council of ministers and a senator, while still retaining the war office. Subsequently Alexander was alienated from him owing to the intrigues of the count's enemies, who hated him for his severity and regarded him as a dangerous reactionary. The alienation was not for long. True, Arak cheyev took no active part in the war of 1812, but all the corre spondence and despatches relating to it passed through his hands, and he was the emperor's inseparable companion during the whole course of it. In Alexander's last years Arakcheyev was his chief counsellor and friend, to whom he submitted all his projects for consideration and revision. On the accession of Nicholas I., Arakcheyev, thoroughly broken in health, gradually restricted his immense sphere of activity, and on April 26 1826 resigned all his offices and retired to Carlsbad. His last days he spent on his estate at Gruzina, carefully collecting all his memorials of Alexander. Arakcheyev died on April 21 1834. In 18o6 he had married but lived apart from his wife.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See Vasily Ratch, Memorials of Count Arakcheyev Bibliography. See Vasily Ratch, Memorials of Count Arakcheyev (Rus.) (1864) ; Mikhail Ivanovich Semevsky, Count Arakcheyev and the Military Colonies (Rus.) (1871) ; Theodor Schiemann, Gesch. Russ land's enter Kaiser Nikolaus 1., vol. i., Alexander 1., etc. (1904)•