Alexander Schlichter

Alexander Grigorievich Schlichter (Ukrainian: Александр Григорьевич Шлихтер) (1868–1940) was a Ukrainian Bolshevik politician, Soviet statesman and economist.

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.

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 the suppression of the Tambov Rebellion.[1]

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".[2]