Oliver Golden

Oliver John Golden (November 18, 1887 – 1940) was an American-born agronomist and politician. Born in Yazoo County, Mississippi, he studied cotton at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. A member of the Communist Party USA, he spent time in Soviet Russia and was later part of a delegation of cotton experts who arrived in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic at the invitation of the Soviet government. During that time, he worked in cotton cultivation, was a teacher at the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Melioration, and served as a municipal councilor in Tashkent. Eventually, he and his wife remained in the Soviet Union and became naturalized Soviet citizens.