Count Sergei Yulyevich Witte (Russian: Сергей Юльевич Витте, Sergej Jul'evič Vitte) (June 29, 1849 – March 13, 1915), also known as Sergius Witte, was a highly influential policy-maker who presided over extensive industrialization within the Russian Empire. He was also the author of the October Manifesto of 1905, a precursor to Russia's first constitution, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) of the Russian Empire.
Witte's family from his father's side was russified Lutheran German and his mother's side Russian nobility. Sergei Witte's maternal grandfather was Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeyev, a Governor of Saratov and Privy Councillor of the Caucasus, his grandmother was Princess Helene Dolgoruki, and the mystic Madame Blavatsky was his first cousin. His father was Julius Witte, his mother was Catherine Fadeyev. He was born in Tiflis and raised in the Caucasus region of Russia, in the house of his mother's parents. He graduated from Novorossiysk University in Odessa with a degree in Mathematics. He then spent the greater part of the 1870s and 1880s involved in private enterprises, particularly the administration and management of various railroad lines in Russia.

Impact on Russian economics
Witte served as Russian Director of Railway Affairs within the Finance Ministry from 1889 – 1891, Transportation Minister (1892), where he pursued an ambitious program of railway construction and oversaw the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
He was appointed Russian Finance Minister in 1892, a position he held until 1903. During his tenure as Finance Minister the nation saw unprecedented economic growth. Witte strongly encouraged foreign capital to invest in Russia, and to do so he put Russia on the gold standard in 1897. Witte encouraged the growth of Russian industry, as a result the industrial sector of the economy expanded rapidly, especially the metals, petroleum, and transportation sectors. To improve the economy and to attract foreign investors Witte also advocated curbing the powers of the Russian autocracy.
Witte was transferred to the relatively powerless position of Chairman of the Committee of Ministers in 1903, a position he held until 1905. This position was also called Secretary of State in the US [1]. In an attempt to keep up the modernization of the Russian economy Witte called and oversaw the Special Conference on the Needs of the Rural Industry. This conference was to provide recommendations for future reforms and the data to justify those reforms. Despite these efforts the lot of the peasants slowly declined and unrest increased in the peasant population.