Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Rittikh or Alexander Rittich () (27 September 1868,

Kazan Kazan; , IPA: Help:IPA/Tatar, ɑzanis the largest city and capital city, capital of Tatarstan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka (river), Kazanka Rivers, covering an area of , with a population of over 1. ...

– 15 June 1937,

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

) was a politician of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, appointed on 29 November 1916, becoming the last imperial Minister of Agriculture (Ministry of Cultivation of the Russian Empire (1915–1917)). The young, energetic, competent Minister was the son of Aleksandr Fyodorovich Rittikh. He was described as an exemplary, neat and smart worker ... with a remarkable perseverance and extraordinary sense of duty. All his works and reports were printed; a model of accuracy and clarity.The PENULTIMATE PRIME Minister of the RUSSIAN EMPIRE A. F. TREPOV by FEDOR ALEKSANDROVICH GAIDA (2012)
/ref> He was responsible for organizing the state requisitioning of grain faced by a

scissor crisis The Scissors Crisis () was an incident in 1923 in the economy of the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy (NEP), when there was a widening gap ("price scissors") between industrial and agricultural prices. The term is now used to describe ...

in 1916, whereby the accelerated inflation of manufactured goods compared to agricultural goods led many peasants to remove their grain from the market. This measure, often associated with the later Bolshevik regime, where it was known as ''

prodrazvyorstka ''Prodrazverstka'', also transliteration of Russian, transliterated ''prodrazvyorstka'' ( rus, продразвёрстка, p=prədrɐˈzvʲɵrstkə, short for , ), alternatively referred to in English as grain requisitioning, was a policy and ...

'', was implemented originally by the

Imperial Russian Government The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. His work in trying to resolve the food crisis is highly praised by

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...

in '' The Red Wheel'', ''March 1917'' node. During the

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

along with

Nikolai Pokrovsky Nikolai Nikolaevich Pokrovsky () (27 January 1865 – 12 December 1930) was a nationalist Russian politician and the last foreign minister of the Russian Empire. Life Pokrovsky was born in St Petersburg. He attended the law schools of the Imperi ...

he tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with representatives of the

Imperial Duma The State Duma, also known as the Imperial Duma, was the lower house of the legislature in the Russian Empire, while the upper house was the State Council. It held its meetings in the Tauride Palace in Saint Petersburg. It convened four times be ...

. In 1918 he lived in Odessa. In 1919 he emigrated to England, where he became director of a Russian Bank in London. In 1920

Alexander Krivoshein Alexander Vasilyevich Krivoshein (; , 1857, Warsaw – October 28, 1921, Berlin) was a Russian monarchist politician and minister of agriculture under Pyotr Stolypin. Life Graduate in law of St. Petersburg University. Worked in the Ministry o ...

offered him a post in the

Government of South Russia The Government of South Russia () was a White movement government established in Sevastopol, Crimea in April 1920. It was the successor to General Anton Denikin's South Russian Government (Южнорусское Правительство ''Yu ...

, operating in the

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

under General

Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel (, ; ; 25 April 1928), also known by his nickname the Black Baron, was a Russian military officer of Baltic German origin in the Imperial Russian Army. During the final phase of the Russian Civil War, he was c ...

, but Rittikh refused. He is buried in Beckenham Cemetery.

References