Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Rittikh or Alexander Rittich (russian: Александр Александрович Риттих) (27 September 1868 – 15 June 1937, London) was a politician of the Russian Empire, 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 Aleksandr Fyodorovich Rittikh or Alexander Rittich (russian: Александр Фёдорович Риттих) (1831 — 1914?) was an Imperial Russian general, cartographer, ethnographer and journalist, adherent of the Panslavism. Father of ...

. 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 is the name for an incident in early 1923 Soviet history 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 thi ...

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'', was implemented originally by the

Imperial Russian Government The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The ...

. His work in trying to resolve the food crisis is highly praised by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in '' The Red Wheel'', ''March 1917'' node. During the

February revolution The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...

along with

Nikolai Pokrovsky Nikolai Nikolayevich 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 Mo ...

he tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with representatives of the Imperial Duma. 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 offered him a post in the

Government of South Russia The Government of South Russia (russian: Правительство Юга России, Pravitel'stvo Yuga Rossii) was a White movement government established in Sevastopol, Crimea in April 1920. It was the successor to General Anton Denikin's ...

, operating in the Crimea under General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel, but Rittikh refused. He is buried in Beckenham Cemetery.

References

Politicians of the Russian Empire Government ministers of Russia 1868 births 1930 deaths {{Russia-politician-stub