ミハイル・クトゥーゾフ
Early members of the society — including agriculturist Andrey Bolotov, general Mikhail Kutuzov, admiral Aleksey Senyavin, and poet Gavrila Derzhavin — largely shared the Physiocratic ideals then prevalent in France. They were anxious to spread the cultivation of potatoes in the Russian countryside and hailed the new crop as "ground apples".