Akhmeteli Mikheil

Mikheil K. Akhmeteli (1895, Borjomi, Georgia—1963, Munich, Germany) was a political scholar, a political and state figure, and one of the founders of the German scientific school of Sovietology.

He graduated from the Georgian Royal Gymnasium in Tbilisi in 1914 and studied at Kharkov University from 1915 to 1917. In 1919, he traveled to Germany, where he graduated from the University of Jena. In 1925, he was awarded a PhD in philosophy by the same university. That same year, he began studying agricultural sciences.

From 1927 to 1934, he was a member of the Institute for East European Studies in Breslau (now Wrocław) and served as its director from 1937 to 1940. From 1928, he was a Privatdozent, then an extraordinary professor, and later a full professor at the University of Breslau. From 1939 on, he was a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. During World War II, he was one of the heads of the Institute for East European and Soviet Studies in Berlin, along with A. Nikuradze.

After the war, he moved to Munich, where he played an active role in founding the Institute for East European and Soviet Studies, which, to this day, remains one of the most significant centers for political science in Eastern Europe. He was a scientific consultant for the institute for many years while serving as a professor at the University of Munich.

Akhmeteli is known for his fundamental works on the agricultural policies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the history of Bolshevism. He published five fundamental monographs, among which the book “Die Agrarpolitik der Sowjet-Union und deren Ergebnisse” (“The Agrarian Policy of the Soviet Union and its Results”, Berlin, 1942) is recognized worldwide.

Akhmeteli was actively involved in political and social life. He was a permanent member of the board of the Georgian community in Germany, an active contributor to Georgian emigrant periodicals published in Germany, and a prominent representative of the anti-Bolshevik and anti-Soviet movements in the West (a founding member of the "Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations").

Literature: ბერლინელი, მიხეილ ახმეტელი (ნეკროლოგი), «კავკასიონი», პარიზი, 1964, №9.

L. Urushadze