Alexander Schlichter

Alexander Grigorievich Schlichter (Ukrainian: Олександр Григорович Шліхтер; 1 September [ O.S. 20 August] 1868 – 2 December 1940) was a Ukrainian Bolshevik politician, Soviet statesman, political scientist and economist.

Family background
Schlichter's grandfather, originally from western Germany (Württemberg), settled in what is the present-day Poltava Oblast of Ukraine in 1818. Schlichter was ethnically one-quarter German and three-fourths Ukrainian.

Career
Following studies at Kharkiv University, Schlichter joined a student the social democratic circle in 1891. He was involved in the technical production of the illegal Bolshevik paper Proletary while it appeared in the Russian Empire (1904–1906). After the Bolshevik seizure of power he succeeded Vladimir Milyutin as People's Commissar for Agriculture. He also was People's Commissar for Food of the R.S.F.S.R., Commissar Extraordinary for Food in Siberia. In 1919, he became People's Commissar for Food of Ukraine.

In 1920, he was Chairman of the Tambov Gubernia Executive Committee, and was involved in suppression of the Tambov Rebellion.

In April 1927, he attended the Fourth Congress of Soviets as commissar of agriculture in the Ukrainian Republic. There, he described 10% of the rural population of Ukraine as being "surplus".

After 1930 he was mostly involved in scientific activity. He was a full member of the Communist Academy from 1930, an Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and from 1928, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR from 1933. He became a Doctor of Economics in 1936. From 1931 to 1938, Schlichter was Vice-President of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, at the same time the director of the All-Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism and then president of the All-Ukrainian Association of Marxist–Leninist Institutions (VUAMLIN) from 1930 to 1936.

He was one of the initiators and active supporters of promoting the theories of Trofim Lysenko.