Shlikhter, Aleksandr

Born Aug. 20 (Sept. 1), 1868, in the city of Lubny, in what is now Poltava Oblast; died Dec. 2, 1940, in Kiev. Soviet state and party figure. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1929) and the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1934). Doctor of economic sciences (1935). Member of the Communist Party from 1891.

The son of a carpenter, Shlikhter joined the revolutionary movement in 1887. Between 1889 and 1891 he studied at the universities of Kharkov and Bern. Over a period beginning in 1891 he carried out work for the Social Democratic Party in the Ukraine, the Urals, and Samara. He was exiled to Vologda Province in 1895. Shlikhter served on committees of the RSDLP in Tula (1901–02), Kiev (1902–04), and Moscow (1907–08). From 1905 to 1907 he helped lead the revolutionary struggle in Kiev, St. Petersburg, and Finland. Shlikhter served as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP. In 1909 he was exiled to Eastern Siberia.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Shlikhter became a member of the executive committee of the Krasnoiarsk soviet and the Central Siberian oblast bureau of the RSDLP. He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B) and a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP(B). During the October Days of 1917, he served as commissar for foodstuffs for the Moscow military revolutionary committee, and between 1917 and 1919 he was people’s commissar of agriculture, people’s commissar for foodstuffs of the RSFSR, and people’s commissar for foodstuffs of the Ukraine. In 1920 and 1921, Shlikhter was chairman of the Tambov provincial executive committee. In 1921 he undertook diplomatic work and became a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade of the USSR. From 1927 to 1929 he was people’s commissar of agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR.

From 1931 to 1938, Shlikhter was vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and from 1930 to 1933 he also served as director of the Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism. He was also a delegate to the Fourteenth through Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP(B). In 1924, Shlikhter became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine (Bolshevik), and from 1926 to 1937 he was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee. In 1924 he served as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the Comintern. He was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. In 1923, Shlikhter was named a member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Ukrainian SSR.