The richest Pole in history and his incredible story (for a week Hattrick).

Who was the richest Pole in history? Few people know about its existence.

At the Catholic Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw, in a remote plot (227), under a modest tombstone lies Karol Jaroszyński, the richest Pole in the history of our country. Not many people know about its existence, but they should. Jaroszyński, like the ancient King Midas, turned everything he touched into gold. The story of the extraordinary financier is recalled by the Warsaw weekly "Passa" .

Karol Jaroszyński was one of the most outstanding figures of the financial oligarchy of pre-revolutionary Russia. Studying the activities of his syndicate allows for a deeper understanding of the relations between Russian and Western financiers before and after the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917 and certain aspects of the financial base of the counterrevolution and anti-Soviet military intervention.

Some of the circumstances of Jaroszyński's functioning in 1917–1918 became known only after the publication of the book entitled "The Allies and the Russian Collapse 1917–1920" (London 1981), by the British journalist Michael Kettle. He was the first to obtain the privilege of familiarizing himself with the super-secret materials of the English War Cabinet, the Foreign Office and the intelligence service.

The activities of the Jaroszyński syndicate also attracted the attention of Soviet and Russian history researchers. Kettle's data are confirmed by the available documents of the Central State Archives of Russia, previously very difficult to access even for trusted Soviet historians and journalists, because the thesis about the October Revolution financed by German money was too compromising for the communists - writes "Passa" .

He won 774 kg of pure gold in Monte Carlo

Born on December 13, 1877 in Kiev, Karol Jaroszyński came from a family of Polish landowners who owned large estates in the Vinnytsia region. In 1834, the family was ennobled. Daniel Beauvois – in his work entitled "Ukrainian Triangle" (4th edition, Lublin 2018) - included a list of Polish landowners in (right-bank) Ukraine who in 1849 owned no less than 1,000 serfs. The list included five lines of the Jaroszyński family ruling the souls of a total of 14,652 subjects.

During the visit of Tsar Nicholas II to Kiev in 1911, Franciszek Jaroszyński, Charles's brother, was promoted to junior chamberlain of the court, which brought the family closer to the highest circles of power. Karol was already a very wealthy man, having broken the bank in a casino in Monte Carlo in 1909, where he won one million rubles playing roulette. To put it very simply, it can be assumed that at parity 1 ruble is equal to 0.7742 gr. gold, Karol left the casino with 774 kg of pure gold.

Initially, Jaroszyński studied at the First Male Gymnasium in Kiev, and then landed in the commercial branch of the Moscow Real School. What could this mean? This may be evidence that Jaroszyński had problems with learning and did not finish junior high school, because if he had completed it, he would have started university studies, not a real (vocational) school.

After his prematurely deceased father, he received part of the inheritance, estimated at approximately PLN 350,000. then pounds (British). Thanks to both the won and inherited money and court connections, as well as contacts in the highest spheres of Russia and Europe, Karol Jaroszyński successfully invested in sugar factories, factories, mines, shipping companies and, above all, in banks.

The outbreak of World War I tripled the profits of the Polish-Russian nawab, and he earned further millions on supplies to the tsarist army. He became the owner of 53 sugar factories and refineries, mines, steelworks, railway and shipping companies, factories, oil companies, insurance companies, etc.

He also had majority shares in 12 banks, including: Petersburg (Russian Commercial and Industrial Bank, Russian Foreign Trade Bank, East Asian Bank, Saint Petersburg International Commercial Bank), as well as in the Siberian Commercial Bank in Yekaterinburg, the Private Commercial Bank in Kiev and the United Bank in Moscow.

By skillfully and sophisticatedly juggling bank funds, Yaroshiński was able to carry out financial and economic operations on a gigantic scale, quickly becoming one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, financial magnate in tsarist Russia.

For the efficient management of the syndicate, he created a Council, which included 5 tsarist ministers and 10 senators, including: Vladimir Kokovtsov, former Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Alexei Lopukhin, former director of the police department. The headquarters of the syndicate called "Management of Karol Jaroszyński's property and interests" was located in the Grand Hotel in Kiev at al. Khreshchatyk 22. This incredibly wealthy entrepreneur had his palaces in Ukraine (including Antopol), in St. Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, in Warsaw (Al. Ujazdowskie 13), and also in the West (residence in London on Berkeley Street, in French Beaulieu – villa Mont Stuart and in Monte Carlo).

In March 1916, his fortune was estimated at 26.1 million rubles, 300 million rubles in bill of exchange debts and 950 million rubles in gold and real estate, a total of 1 billion 276 million rubles. He controlled dozens of domestic enterprises in the metallurgical, mechanical, textile, steam and railway transport, confectionery and other industries. At the parity of 1 ruble, then equal to 0.7742 grams of gold, Karol Jaroszyński's fortune was equivalent to approximately one thousand tons of gold. Converting it into today's money, it would be over PLN 200 billion.

A great rich man and a great Polish patriot

At the beginning of World War I, when he was in Russia, he purchased real estate in St. Petersburg at 12 Kriukova Canal Embankment (a residential tenement house, a manege and stables for sports horses), which he allocated for the installation and headquarters of the House and Club of Polish Youth "Zgoda". There was the headquarters of the "Sokół" society, the oldest Polish gymnastic society promoting a healthy lifestyle, and the Piłsudczyk-based Polish Military Organization (POW). This is the best proof that Jaroszyński definitely felt like a Pole.

The "Zgoda" House and Club began operating on May 30, 1917. The complex included residential and club rooms, a large theater hall, a swimming pool, and a tennis court in the courtyard. In 2000, the complex was entered into the register of monuments of the city of St. Petersburg. Jaroszyński was also a benefactor and patron of Artur Rubinstein, a Polish piano virtuoso of Jewish origin.

In 1918, Karol Jaroszyński became the president of the Organizing Committee of the Catholic University, for which he contributed over 8 million rubles as his share (the other shareholder was a Pole, communication engineer Franciszek Skąpski). The initiator of establishing the facility was Fr. Idzi Radziszewski, at that time the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, and later the first rector of the Catholic University of Lublin.

At the beginning of the 21st century, two interesting books were published in English, in which Karol Jaroszyński is a key figure. The first of them (English edition in 2001) by Mrs. Shay McNeal was also published in Polish and is titled: "Saving Tsar Nicholas II. A secret mission to save the Tsar's family." The second book by Michael Occleshaw (English edition 2006) entitled "Behind the scenes of the Bolshevik Revolution" was published in Polish in 2007.

Both items concern the same period and the same topic, which can be conventionally defined as Russia in the years 1914–1920. The books were created mainly on the basis of British and American archival materials, the vast majority of them previously unused. An interesting fact may be that the files of the head of British intelligence in Petrograd, Sir Samuel Hoare, preserved in the Cambridge University library, were declassified only in 2005.

A poisoned needle at the Paris Opera

Shay McNeal has oversimplified a lot of things. Poland practically does not exist in her work, but Karol Jaroszyński, who is described as a Ukrainian, is the main character appearing throughout almost 300 pages of the study. Another character with whom the author had considerable difficulties, probably mainly because of the Russian alphabet, was the "ex-tsarist official" WM von Lar-Larski. This is most likely WM Wonlar-Larski from a wealthy family from Smolensk, from which he came, among others. Aleksander Walerianowicz Wonlar-Larski, until 1915 the owner of the Kozienice estate (85 km south of Warsaw).

There are a few such awkwardnesses, but Shay McNeal's book brings many new, interesting, but often controversial elements to the seemingly closed story of Tsar Nicholas II. In the "Epilogue", that is, a dictionary of the most important figures, Shay McNeal wrote under the entry Karol Jaroszyński: "He died in almost poverty in 1928 after donating the remainder of his estate to the University of Lublin, the largest Jesuit university in Poland. The last years of his life were marked by suffering as a result of being pricked with a poisoned needle at the Paris Opera, which occurred almost at the same time when Sidney Reilly, an officer of Scotland Yard and then the British secret services, disappeared without a trace somewhere in Soviet Russia.

"There were also attempts to discredit Jaroszyński, but at his funeral in Warsaw, almost out of nowhere, nearly a thousand people showed up to pay tribute to him. However, there was no widow among them because Jaroszyński never married. According to his family, he fell in love before the revolution. in one of the tsar's daughters, however, it seems that his feelings remained unrequited. Nevertheless, his role in the final months of the imprisonment of the family of Tsar Nicholas II was enormous. Shay McNeal assessed Jaroszyński's activities in Russia from the point of view of his impact on the possibility of saving the tsar and the tsar's family in the summer of 1918.

In the spring and summer of 1917, the Romanov family was imprisoned in Tsarskoye Selo and later lived in solitary confinement in Tobolsk. During this period, the care of the tsar's family was held on behalf of the "white" Russian authorities by Colonel Eugeniusz Kobyliński, who was replaced in Yekaterinburg by the staunch Bolshevik Yakov Yurovsky (actually Yankel Chaimovich Jurowski), commander of the firing squad and later the tsar's assassin (July 17, 1918). In Yekaterinburg, the Romanovs were imprisoned in a house previously belonging to a mining engineer, Professor Nikolai Ipatyev.

It is also worth noting that in the last days of Nicholas II's life, a certain Pyotr Voykov, a few years later the ambassador of Soviet Russia in Warsaw, appeared in Bolshevik circles in Yekaterinburg. On June 7, 1927, at the Warszawa Główna railway station, the "white" emigrant Borys Kowerda shot at Wojków, killing him on the spot. The assassin defended himself in a Polish court, trying to convince the judges that the reason for the attack was Voykov's participation in the execution of Nicholas II.

Salvatore of the Tsar's family with British support

Michael Occleshaw, on the other hand, considers Jaroszyński's activity from the point of view of his contribution to the fight against Bolshevism. In both cases, the most important weapon was money, and above all, Karol Jaroszyński's extraordinary skill in using it. These qualities became especially valuable in 1917 and the following years, because Russia was sinking into enormous debts.

Since July 1917, Russia owed 2 billion 760 million pounds to Great Britain, 760 million dollars to France, 280 million dollars to the United States and 100 million dollars each to Italy and Japan. However, on December 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks issued a statement that they did not accept the existence of Russia's previous foreign obligations. In the additional treaty signed on August 27, 1918, Russia only agreed to pay Germany war reparations in the amount of 6 billion marks (today's USD 200 billion), of which 662.5 million marks were transferred to Germany on September 10 and 30.

The Bolshevik authorities in Russia found themselves in an extremely difficult financial situation. In this state of affairs, Jaroszyński became the main pillar of activities that historians and politicians called the "banking intrigue". Michael Occleshaw claims that Jaroszyński was introduced to the game by WM Wonlarlarski (WM Wonlar-Larski - LK's note), the cousin of Mikhail Rodzianko, the chairman of the Duma and the leader of the counterrevolution in southern Russia. In his book, Occleshaw quotes a fragment of the opinion of the British intelligence about Jaroszyński: "He recognized (Jaroszyński - LK's note) that in order to become a great and famous man, you need to spend huge sums. He developed an ambitious financial plan based more on speculation than on the passion for creating or developing industry ".

A little further, he quotes the opinion of a Russian, an informant of the secret services: "Mr. Yaroshiński is a very educated man, very smart, and also a perfect gentleman in manners and speech. These features speak in his favor and in Petrograd financial circles he is considered an influential figure." Karol Jaroszyński was also a trusted person at the tsar's court, and after the arrest of the Romanovs, he even became their benefactor (opinion of Shay McNeal and Michael Occleshaw).

One of the next important figures connected with the "bank scandal", and at the same time Jaroszyński's right hand, was the legendary agent of the British secret services, the above-mentioned Sidney Reilly. Born in Poland in 1874 as Salomon Grigoriewicz Rosenblum, in 1899 he changed his name to Sidney George Reilly and obtained a British passport. Reilly arrived in Russia in early April 1918, assuming the identity of the Bolshevik Konstantin Relinsky.

Jaroszyński's next collaborator was a young artillery officer, Borys Solovyov, who held, among others, a very responsible and discreet role as a courier for Tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra during their imprisonment. An interesting fact is that Soloviev married Maria, the widowed daughter of the famous monk Grigory Rasputin. The concept of the "banking intrigue" was created in Great Britain and was intended to defeat the Bolsheviks with financial weapons, and also included a plan to save the Tsar and his family.

In the fall of 1917, Yaroshiński made a proposal to the British officer of the military mission, Colonel Terence Keyes, an intelligence employee, but of a higher rank, that if London allocated 200 million rubles, he would gain full control over Russian foreign trade through the Russian Commercial and Industrial Bank, St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank, Volga-Kam Commercial Bank and Siberian merchant banks. This will allow the establishment of the Cossack Bank in the south, which will, among other things, would finance the "white" army fighting the Bolsheviks.

Michael Occleshaw writes: "The original plan was to provide Jaroszyński with 5 million British pounds, i.e. 200 million rubles at 3.5 percent. This sum was to be secured by his shares in railways, oil companies, cement plants, sugar factories, timber, linen, cotton and coal enterprises, owned by banks, most of them remained outside the control of the Bolsheviks. Jaroszyński's shares were worth 350 million rubles. For his part, he was not supposed to buy the shares, but to give the British half of the seats on the supervisory board. The council was to consist of four members (two from each Russia and Great Britain) who would control the policy of the banks and direct them in accordance with British interests.

It was a smart move. Soviet historians wrote years later that "British capitalists expected to cover their expenses a hundredfold with various financial frauds related to Russia in order to ensure, in the long term, British capital a dominant position in the Russian economy." On November 30, 1917, Jaroszyński met with WM Rodzianka, the leader of the Private Duma Assembly, and talked with him about financial assistance for the "white movement".

He also met with the leaders of the Russian counterrevolution, as well as with British representatives looking for "channels for financing the white armies in the south." Shay McNeal claims in his book that as part of a "banking intrigue", Lenin was paid half a million British pounds as a down payment for discreetly handing over the Tsar and his family to the Allies. Karol Jaroszyński was to be the intermediary. Many people and institutions participated in the broadly understood "banking intrigue", including: National City Bank, but also Tomasz Masaryk, the future first president of Czechoslovakia, indirectly controlling the Czechoslovak Corps in Siberia, which attacked Yekaterinburg in July 1918 and occupied the city on July 25.

According to McNeal, Karol Jaroszyński, a friend of the tsarist family and its benefactor, was the main figure of a secret international organization that had a significant influence on the situation in post-revolutionary Russia. On that memorable Friday, December 14, 1917, the investigative commission of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies issued a decree on the nationalization of banks and an arrest warrant for Karol Jaroszyński. Deregistered in March 1918 by his representative Jan Surbiak, he hid in Petrograd for several months. He left the city only on August 5 of that year, that is, a few days after the Allies landed in Arkhangelsk, ordering Surbyak to save the still huge estate left on the Neva.

After leaving Petrograd, Jaroszyński went first to Kiev and then to the south of Russia, from where in 1919 he went to Odessa, which he left in the spring of 1920 on board a French torpedo boat. He settled in France. In Paris, he resided at the Hotel Vendôme, where he tried to collect the remnants of the fortune located outside the USSR. However, the managers of the banks whose shares were owned by Karol Jaroszyński did everything they could. They demanded, among other things, refund of cash for the original shares lost in Petrograd, and some of his former subordinates questioned the ownership titles of their former principal for their own benefit.

Jaroszyński could not count on the intervention of the Polish government, which was completely unaware of the scale of his pre-revolutionary activities and completely failed to take advantage of the opportunities provided in this respect by the Treaty of Riga in 1921.

After the Bolsheviks, Jewish bankers harmed him

In 1920, Karol Jaroszyński moved from France to Poland, where, taking advantage of the inflationary situation, he created a new financial concern by purchasing shares of several different enterprises and banks. He lived in the Sobański palace in Al. Ujazdowskie 13. In the years 1921–1922, he was a financial advisor to the Chief of State, Józef Piłsudski, whom he repeatedly warned against the domination of German capital in domestic banking.

In 1921, Jaroszyński co-organized the establishment of the Russian-Polish Bank and became its director. Unfortunately, two years later the bank bought out the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The name was immediately changed to Bank dla Spółdzielczości SA, which became the headquarters of Jewish credit cooperatives in Poland. Jaroszyński was forced to look for credit opportunities from Jews. Without success. When he asked about loans, he was asked: "Why did you found this university?"

Here we need to go back in time to explain the meaning of such a question. In 1917, on the advice of the last rector of the St. Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy, Fr. Idzi Radziszewski, Jaroszyński got involved in the idea of establishing a Catholic university in Lublin, currently the Catholic University of Lublin. On June 28, 1918, he sent a letter to the Polish episcopate in which he wrote, among other things: "Our duty is to strive for the rebirth of Poland after the sufferings we have suffered, and therefore to exert all our strength to resurrect the greatest amount of national energy."

This task was to be performed by a Catholic university surrounded by a network of factories that would enable students to become socially active and acquire practical knowledge. He then declared that he would donate PLN 1,300,000 for the construction of a new university. rubles for its needs in the first year of operation. These plans were then thwarted by the Bolshevik coup. Despite financial problems, Karol Jaroszyński donated PLN 350,000 for the construction of the Catholic University of Lublin in the years 1918–1922. rubles, about 15 million German marks, 291 thousand Swedish kronor, 500 British pounds and 40 thousand. Swiss francs, and he paid subsequent sums until his death.

It should be noted that in Lublin, where this Catholic university founded by Jaroszyński operates dynamically, his name is not even commemorated in the name of the street. This great philanthropist was also one of the largest donors to hospitals under the patronage of the Tsar's daughters - Grand Duchess Maria and Grand Duchess Anastasia. In the last years of his life, Karol Jaroszyński lived in a tenement house at ul. Smocza 7, in the Jewish poor district. He died on September 8, 1929 of typhoid fever in the hospital of St. Ducha at ul. Elektoralna 12 in Warsaw.

He was 52 years old then. He was buried in the impressive family tomb at Powązki, in the so-called Catacomb Avenue (pillar 44), but soon the remains were moved to a modest grave in plot 227, far from the Catacombs. Could it be the money that Jaroszyński handled so efficiently throughout his life? Are we dealing with family revenge for depriving the family of a multi-million inheritance that they were probably counting on?

Karol Jaroszyński's deep involvement in the attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik regime in Russia was probably the reason for the attempt on his life at the Paris Opera, where he was pricked with a poisoned needle. He somehow managed to get out of it, but the attack had a negative impact on his health. Jaroszyński's involvement in the fight against Bolshevism also resulted in the complete silence of this man's name in the historiography of the Polish People's Republic. The life of Karol Jaroszyński is excellent material for a film script. Maybe local cinema will take up the task of immortalizing this exceptionally colorful character?