German-Jewish American banker; head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. — the second- largest investment bank in America after J.P. Morgan. Refused war loans to the Allies at the start of WWI specifically because he feared they would benefit Tsarist Russia. Per Max Warburg's obituary for Schiff: "He regarded it as his mission to bring all his influence to bear in Russia in order to put an end to the horror to which the Jews there were subjected." British intelligence summarized: Schiff was "interested in [a] propaganda movement to overthrow the Tsar of Russia in order to liberate the Jews," sent "several million dollars to Berlin for this purpose." Per Tsarist officer Gulevič: in spring 1917 Schiff publicly boasted of having made $2 million available "in preparation for the February Revolution." Sutton's documentary record traces specific financial flows from Kuhn-Loeb / Schiff connections to the Bolshevik operation through Trotsky's NYC period (January-April 1917) and the post-October regime's early consolidation. (Claim WiU-22-014.)
The structural significance: Schiff is the most-documented case of a specific Wall Street financier with both ideological and financial commitment to the regime-change of one major 20-c power. His reading — that Tsarism was structurally evil because of its anti-Jewish pogroms, that overthrowing it was a moral duty, that the Bolshevik alternative was acceptable as the available regime-change vehicle — was genuine on his terms. Whether his backing of the Bolsheviks was naïve about what they would become is a separate question; the documentary record establishes the backing without resolving the question of intent. Died September 25, 1920. (Claims WiU-22-014; Sutton WSBR Ch 1-3.)