Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky

Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky
М.I. Туган-Барановський
Secretary of Finance
In office
Aug. 13, 1917 – Nov. 20, 1917
Prime Minister Volodymyr Vynnychenko
Preceded by Khrystofor Baranovsky
Succeeded by Vasyl Mazurenko (temporary)
Personal details
Born (1865-01-20)January 20, 1865
village of Solonom, Russian Empire
Died January 21, 1919(1919-01-21) (aged 54)
Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Ukraine
Political party Cadet (until 1917), UPSF
Alma mater Kharkiv University
Occupation academician, statesman, public activist

Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky (Ukrainian: Михайло Туган-Барановський) (January 20, 1865 – January 21, 1919) was a Russian-Ukrainian economist, politician, statesman. He is remembered as a leading exponent of Legal Marxism in the Tsarist Russian Empire and was the author of numerous works dealing with the theory of value, the distribution of a social revenue, history of managerial development, and fundamentals of cooperative managerial activities.

Early life

Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky was born on 8 January 1865 in the village of Solyonoe, located near Kharkov in today's Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire. His father's forefathers were Lipka Tatars who had come to Lithuania in the 14th century; the full family name was Tugan Mirza Baranovsky.[1] His mother was an ethnic Ukrainian from the Poltava region.

Tugan-Baranovsky attended high school in the cities of Kiev and Kharkov, developing an early affinity for philosophy, including the works of Immanuel Kant. In 1884 he entered Kharkov University, beginning his studies in the natural sciences. He was awarded the degree of Candidate of Sciences in 1888 but he became interested in political economy and wound up completing his studies as an external student with a degree from the school's Faculty of Law and Economics in 1890. While in college Tugan-Baranovsky became active in the revolutionary movement which sought to overthrow Tsarism in Russia, briefly making the acquaintance of Vladimir Lenin's older brother, Aleksandr Ulyanov, who was executed in 1887 for his part in the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III.[2]

In November 1886 Tugan-Baranovsky was arrested for participating in a student demonstration in St. Petersburg marking the 25th anniversary of the death of critical writer Nikolay Dobrolyubov. As a result of the arrest Tugan-Baranovsky was expelled from the capital city, falling out of contact with the ill-fated older Ulyanov. Tugan-Baranovsky married the daughter of the director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Lydia Davydova, in 1889.[3]

Academic career

Shortly after his marriage, Tugan-Baranovsky began what would be a long running and esteemed academic career. His first scholarly article, "The Doctrine of the Marginal Utility of Economic Goods," saw print in October 1890 in the journal Iuridicheskii Vestnik (Jurisprudence Courier).[4] In this work, which presaged his later criticism of Marxism, Tugan-Baranovsky argued that the labor theory of value and contemporary Marginalist economics were in basic agreement rather than in antagonistic opposition.[5]

After this first foray into theoretical economics, Tugan-Baranovsky turned his hand to the writing of biography, contributing short popular sketches of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill to a series entitled "Lives of Remarkable Men," produced by the publisher Pavlenkov.[6] In these roughly 80-page books Tugan-Baranovsky was highly critical of Proudhon for his lack of internal consistency, stylistic obscurity, lack of imagination, and hypocritical support of the regime of Louis Napoleon.[7] He was much more sympathetic to Mill, hailing the socialist economist as one who "more than anyone else helped the spread throughout the civilized world of a right understanding of the spirit of contemporary science, based on the study of nature."[8]

Following the intellectual example of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Tugan-Baranovsky looked to England for the path that developing nations such as Russia inevitably must travel.[9] He next journeyed to London in the spring and summer of 1891 to work in the British Museum, there examining the collection of rare books and statistical works.[10] He then returned to Russia, spending two more years at work in St. Petersburg on a substantial tome of business cycle theory, Industrial Crises in Contemporary England: Their Causes and Influences on the Life of the People.[10] Publication of the book in 1894 earned Tugan-Baranovsky a Master's degree in Political Economics from Moscow University.[10]

The achievement of this academic rank allowed Tugan-Baranovsky to gain employment in academia, accepting an appointment as a Privatdozent (lecturer) at St. Petersburg University.[11] According to his student and biographer Nikolai Kondratiev, Tugan-Baranovsky retained this position until 1899, when he was dismissed for political unreliability.[12]

Political activities

In 1895 Tugan-Baranovsky and his co-thinker Peter Struve joined the Free Economical Association, of which he became the chairman in 1896.[13] In December of that year he published a seminal article of Marxist theory, frequently reprinted, "The Significance of the Economic Factor in History," which drew the attention and written replies of leading narodnik critics such as V. A. Obolensky and N.K. Mikhailovsky.[14] While he consistently expressed Marxist economic and political ideas in this period, there is no indication that Tugan-Baranovsky ever joined the underground Social Democratic movement which was then emerging in Russia.[14]

It was also during this time that his magnum opus, The Russian Factory in Past and Present appeared,[15] The publication of this book led in 1898 to Tugan-Baranovsky receiving a doctorate degree from Moscow University.

From 1901 to 1905 Tugan-Baranovsky participated in the public life of the Poltava region where he joined the local zemstvo (a form of local government). Later he returned to St. Petersburg, lecturing as private docent and as professor in the economics departments of various local polytechnic and commercial institutes and also at the private university of Shaniavsky in Moscow.

Interest in Neokantianism

Monument to M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky (near Donetsk Commercial University).

During the early years of the 20th century he completely moved away from the popular views of legal Marxism towards the neokantianism that is reflected in his various works regarding the cooperative movement. In 1901-1902 Tugan-Baranovsky published his "Notes from the History of Political Economics" in the journal Narodnoe Bagatstvo (National Wealth), where he described the history of economics doctrines in the Russian Empire, and "Notes of the Newest History in Political Economics" (1903). This work was translated into German in 1915. Later he published various other works in Russian and German as well.

In 1919 his first publication in Ukrainian appeared, Cooperation, its nature and goals. Other works continued to appear up until 1923. Since 1906 he was the chief editor of Vestnik Kooperatsii (Cooperative Digest). Before World War I he worked, along with Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and other Ukrainian academicians, on the encyclopedia Ukrainsky narod v ego proshlom i nastoyaschem (The Ukrainian nation in its past and present). As the member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists quit the General Secretariat on 20 November 1917 in the protest to the proclamation of the Third Universal of the Central Rada that advocated a wider autonomy to Ukraine.

Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky was one of the founders of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, as well as the Secretary of Finance of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. His major work is The Russian Factory in Past and Present (1898).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ A.V. Tyrkova-Williams, Na putiakh k svobode (On the Path to Freedom). New York: 1942; pg. 38. Cited in Richard Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists: A Study of 'Legal Marxism' in Russia. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1962; pg. 52.
  2. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 52.
  3. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 53.
  4. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pp. 53-54.
  5. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 54.
  6. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pp. 54-55.
  7. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 55.
  8. ↑ M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky, J.S. Mill, pg. 71. Quoted in Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pp. 55-56.
  9. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pp. 56-57.
  10. 1 2 3 Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 57.
  11. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 58.
  12. ↑ N.D. Kondratiev, Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky. St. Petersburg: 1923; pg. 115. Cited in Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 58, fn. 4.
  13. ↑ Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pp. 58-59.
  14. 1 2 Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, pg. 59.
  15. ↑ In English: The Russian Factory in the 19th Century, translated by Arthur Levin, Claora S. Levin and Gregory Grossman, Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1970.

Further reading

Preceded by
Khrystofor Baranovsky		 General Secretary of Finance
August 14, 1917–November 20, 1917 		Succeeded by
Vasyl Mazurenko (acting)


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