Sergei Witte has been described variously as statesman, industrializer, bureaucrat, careerist. Yet, like so many other Russians in the late 19th century, Witte was a dreamer. He lived in the European Age of Empire - a time before the chaos of twentieth-century war and revolution, when instead global expanses, new technologies, powerful national states, and evolving cultures seemingly made all things possible. This article examines three intertwined dreams that entranced Witte in these years. The first was a dream of a powerful Russian Empire, its vast Eurasian space subjugated by transcontinental railroad, global commerce, and Russian civilization. The second, especially apparent when he remembered the reign of Emperor Alexander III, was a dream of a Russian autocracy whose monarchical authority was legitimate because it guaranteed imperial power, social order, and popular welfare. The third, necessary if the first two were to be sustained, imagined the unity of an imperial nation, created by a powerful commercial-industrial economy out of the disparate ethnic communities that constituted the Russian Empire. The article speculates that these dreams motivated much of Witte's action in end-of-the-century Russia.