Vorontsov Family Papers

The Vorontsov brothers were the founders and directors of a major commercial enterprise that bore their name: Firma Brat'ia Vorontsovy. They began as workers then as contractors in the building of the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1898 and quickly became monopolists in the supply of timber for the western end of the line. They acquired timber concessions in North Manchuria, and their employees soon numbered nearly 3,000. By 1925, they entered into a partnership with the Chinese Eastern Railway and the local Chinese provincial government for the supply of timber, retaining control of operations of the new enterprise (Khaiminskoe lesopromyshlennoe tovarishchestvo).

In an attempt to create close and reliable food sources for their lumberjacks, they introduced wheat farming, cattle and dairy production to regions along the western line that had not had any experience of intensive agriculture and cattle breeding. The success was such that their dairy products found markets as far away as Tsingtao, Shanghai and Dairen. Their promising sheep-breeding operations, which produced high-quality wool, were disrupted by the events of 1929. In addition to this, in 1917 they began breeding Orlov trotters, in 1924 they opened a winery and distillery, and over the 1920s and 1930s built electrical stations and saw- and flour-mills at various points. In 1929-1930, they constructed the first commercial refrigerated warehouse in Harbin.

Many Russian émigrés and countless Chinese found gainful employment thanks to the Vorontsovs' entrepreneurship, but in the mid-1950s the Chinese government nationalized all their enterprises, depriving their heirs and descendants of the fruits of the Vorontsov brothers' labors.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.

Vorontsov Family Papers Register