general in the imperial Russian army who, during World War I, was appointed minister of war in 1915 to revitalize the sagging Russian war effort. A capable administrator of liberal sympathies, he was dismissed after less than a year.

Having fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, Polivanov served on the army's general staff (1899–1904), during which time he edited several journals. He was chief of the general staff from 1905 to 1906 and was assistant minister of war from 1906 to 1912, but he was dismissed from the latter post for being too cooperative with liberal elements in the Duma. From 1912 to 1915 he served on the State Council. As minister of war from June 1915 to March 1916, Polivanov reorganized the army's training program as well as the military production and supply system. He also unsuccessfully tried to dissuade Tsar Nicholas II from personally assuming supreme command of Russia's armed forces in September 1915. Nicholas eventually dismissed Polivanov from his ministry at the instigation of the empress, Alexandra.

Polivanov offered his services to the Red Army in February 1920 and was a military expert at the Soviet–Polish peace talks in 1920 at Riga, where he died of typhus.