Eikhe, Robert

(in Latvian, Roberts Eihe). Born July 31 (Aug. 12), 1890, on the Avotiņu estate in Dobele District, Courland Province; died Feb. 2, 1940. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1905.

The son of a farmhand, Eikhe became a metalworker. In 1908 he joined the city committee of the Social Democracy of the Latvian Territory (SDLT) in Mitava (now Jelgava). After leaving Latvia in late 1908, he took part in the work of the London group of the SDLT. In 1911 he returned to Riga, and in 1914 he became a member of the Central Committee of the SDLT. In 1915, Eikhe was exiled to Siberia, but he escaped. He became a member of the presidium of the Riga soviet in 1917. During the German occupation, he engaged in underground work.

In 1919, Eikhe became people’s commissar for foodstuffs of Soviet Latvia. After the fall of Soviet power in Latvia, he performed executive work in the People’s Commissariat for Foodstuffs of the RSFSR until 1924. From 1925 to 1927 he was chairman of the Siberian Krai Executive Committee and secretary of the Western Siberian Krai Committee of the ACP(B). In October 1937 he became people’s commissar of agriculture of the USSR.

Eikhe was a delegate to the Fourteenth through Seventeenth Party Congresses. At the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Congresses he was named a candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B), and at the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Congresses, a member. Eikhe became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1935. In 1921 he served as a delegate to the Third Congress of the Comintern. Eikhe was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

Eikhe was awarded the Order of Lenin.