By Peggy Noonan
June 4, 2026
WSJ
For a long time I have been interested in the stories of those who operated in the top tier of history but weren’t themselves rulers. Many were diplomats whose careers, for all their brilliant efforts, ended in disappointment. One was Sergei Witte, the long-serving finance minister who spent six months as the first prime minister of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II. Witte’s memoirs were published in America in 1921, five years after his death. They contain a brief but vivid portrait—at once sweet and grudging—of the America he encountered in August 1905.
In the memoir he is much like the man described in the history books—farsighted, insightful, peppery. His great gift was a penetrating mind that went quickly to the heart of the matter; he understood the implication of things. He was a man of great asperity, waspish and blunt. Emphatic, he was accused of being alarmist. He had enemies in every camp; only his brilliance kept him afloat.
Witte’s wife, in the foreword, says he was neither a courtier flattering a monarch nor a demagogue flattering a mob. She quotes him as telling friends, “I am neither a Liberal nor a Conservative. I am simply a man of culture.”
But his overriding purpose couldn’t have been greater—to save Russia, to save the czar and the aristocracy from themselves, to block the revolutionists of the left by giving Russia a true constitution, to liberalize, but not at a speed that was more than the nation could bear.
He opposed Russia’s foreign policy of aggression and double-dealing in the East, and when this produced a war with Japan in 1904, he warned it would be a disaster and resigned. “Our entire fleet was buried in the Japanese waters,” Witte writes. Russia lost every major land battle. Following the catastrophe a revolution almost toppled the czar.
Here enters America. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to host and mediate peace negotiations in Portsmouth, N.H. The czar brought Witte back as his chief representative.
And so Witte tells us what he saw of the U.S. From first steaming out of Cherbourg, France, he was shocked to realize the “tremendous influence of the press in America.” It actually shaped public opinion. He was mobbed by reporters and apprehended his mission: spin them like a top. No, Russia isn’t desperate for a deal, it’s here mostly to be polite. No, Russia isn’t bankrupt. He devised a strategy: to behave “without a shadow of snobbishness” and win over the American people. He would treat everyone “with the utmost simplicity,” talk, shake hands—“in a word I treated everybody of whatever social position as an equal.” He found this exhausting, “as all acting is to the unaccustomed.”
As his ship approached New York, he found a prosperous country exploding with joy. “We were met by a whole flotilla of small vessels and motor boats.” The Secret Service agents assigned to him shocked him with their dignity: they “looked, spoke and behaved like gentlemen, these American sleuths.”
He visited “sky-scrapers,” taking an elevator up 37 floors in one such “monster.” “There was a light breeze blowing and I could feel the top room swaying.” America was expensive: “You cannot give the elevator boy a tip less than a dollar.” He couldn’t believe most of the waiters in hotels and restaurants were university students who were “not ashamed of the menial duties.” Russian youths would rather starve “than demean themselves by doing the work of a servant.” Young women, even from good families, went strolling with young men unaccompanied on the streets and in the parks. This left him “shocked.”
Wherever Witte and his entourage went, “our way was marked by continuous roaring and shrieking of sirens and factory whistles.”
In Boston, authorities feared an attack. When Witte saw a crowd, he stepped among them and struck up a conversation. “They were Jews who had emigrated from Russia. We spoke Russian.” Most had been in America only a few years and had fled Russian oppression. “I was anxious to know how they were getting on economically. They explained to me that in America they enjoyed full liberty and equal rights, and for that reason had no great difficulty in securing a more or less comfortable living.” But they would always love Russia and didn’t side with Japan. They wished him good fortune: “And we shall pray to God for you.”
After each negotiation there were processions, the roads lined with spectators and saluting troops. As he rode past one detachment someone called out an old Russian military greeting, “I wish you good health, your excellency!” The soldier presented arms. Witte was shocked at this breach of discipline, but nobody minded.
A peace treaty was hammered out on Sept. 5, 1905.
Portsmouth exploded. It announced the signing by cannon shot. The town bedecked itself in flags. Witte was driven to a local church, the crowd so dense he could barely break through. “Many tried to shake hands with us—the usual _expression_ of attention with Americans.” In the church, “we beheld a wonderful spectacle: ministers of various creeds and faiths, including our Orthodox priest from New York and several rabbis, had formed a solemn procession.” A choir sang a peace hymn. Thanksgiving prayers, sermons, more singing—“people wept.”
Even Witte wept. “Never did I pray with more fire than at that moment.” This was a unity of all churches, “which is the dream of all the truly enlightened followers of Christ.” This section is unlike any other part of the memoirs. Witte was moved. America moved him.
“I asked myself how it concerned them. The answer was: ‘Are we not all Christians?’ ” The choir sang “God Save the Czar.” As he left, people put gifts in his pocket “in accordance with a local custom.” Many were trinkets, but some were of real value.
After Portsmouth, one remarkable interaction. He met with the wealthy banker J.P. Morgan on his yacht. Witte wanted his support of a loan for Russia, whose treasury had been emptied by war and revolution. Morgan said he’d help.
Witte then offered a service. “Morgan is afflicted with a nose disease which greatly disfigures him . . . a large growth resembling a beet.” Witte told Morgan of a doctor in Berlin who surgically removes such growths and restores noses “to their normal state.”
Morgan said he knew of the doctor but would be embarrassed to change how he looked. “If I come to New York with my nose cured, every street boy will point at me and split his sides laughing. Everybody knows my nose.”
What he was saying was: It’s part of my brand.
Witte portrays Morgan as good-natured during the exchange. Months later Morgan backed out of the loan.
Surprisingly, Witte didn’t sum up his thoughts on America. But between the lines it’s clear: He knew he’d seen something big and new and real, something coming—a mighty locomotive bearing down history’s tracks.
The next year Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize. America had arrived.
Witte lived to see the start of World War I, which he’d warned against and prophesied would end in “catastrophe” for Russia. Nobody listened. Witte is so alarmist, people thought.