Anton Romanovich Zhebrak (Belarusian: Антон Раманавіч Жэбрак; 27 December 1901 – 20 May 1965) was a Soviet botanist, geneticist and professor.
In 1949 he moved to the Academy of Medical Science's Institute of Pharmacology in Moscow, where he was a professor of botany until his death, in 1965.
[1] As his scientific achievements continued through his career, this party membership reduced possible roadblocks within the Soviet academic community; by example, he had witnessed that 62 of the 69 professors at the Institute of Red Professors, during the last year of his graduate studies, were members of the Communist Party.
In 1996, Nikolai Krementsov published the book Stalinist Science, in which he cites Zhebrak, and others, as forces who found ways to bypass and even exploit the Party's political systems, creating more academic freedom than would otherwise have been allowed.
Zherbak was the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR from May to October 1947 but was removed from his office as he was one of numerous scientists targeted by an anti-cosmopolitan campaign in the immediate period after World War II.