Tulaikov, Nikolai

Born July 26 (Aug. 7), 1875, in the village of Akshuat, in what is now Barysh Raion, Ul’ianovsk Oblast; died Jan. 20,1938. Soviet agronomist and soil scientist. Honored Worker in Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1929), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1932), and academician of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935). Member of the CPSU from 1930.

The son of a peasant, Tulaikov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Agriculture (now the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy) in 1901. He was director of the Bezenchuk (now Kuibyshev) Agricultural Experiment Station from 1910 to 1916 and of the All-Union Institute of Grain Production in Saratov from 1920 to 1937. His main work was in soil science, plant physiology, dry-area land cultivation (he developed methods for fighting drought), and agrochemistry. In the 1920’s and 1930’s he harshly criticized the grassland agriculture system of V. R. ViF-iams and the latter’s teaching of a single process of soil formation. In 1928 he became a member of the Central Bureau of VARNITSO (the All-Union Association of Scientific and Technical Workers for Active Participation in Socialist Construction in the USSR). In this capacity he helped to organize the Grain Farming Trust and the conduct of research at the trust’s experiment stations in the Volga Region, the Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and Western Siberia; he also aided in drawing up plans for the irrigation of the Trans-Volga Region and the development of lands suitable for cultivation in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Urals.

Tulaikov received the V. I. Lenin Award in 1929. He was a corresponding member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Agriculture (1932).