Alexey Peshekhonov
Alexey Peshekhonov | |
---|---|
Алексей Пешехонов | |
Personal details | |
Born | 2 January [O.S. 21 January] 1867 Chukavino Village, Staritsky Uyezd, Tver Province, Russian Empire |
Died | 3 April 1933 Riga, Latvia | (aged 66)
Citizenship | Russian Empire |
Political party | Popular Socialists |
Alexey Vasilyevich Peshekhonov (Russian: Алексе́й Васи́льевич Пешехо́нов; February 2, 1867 [O.S. January 21] – April 3, 1933) was a Russian economist, publicist, and statistician. He was a member of the Russian provisional government as a minister of food supplies for some months in the summer of 1917.[1][2]
Life
Peshekhonov was born in the Staritsky district of
Around the turn of the century, in addition to his journalism, Peshekhonov became increasingly active in the left-liberal political world - i.e., he was co-founder in 1903 of a "
In February 1917 Peshekhonov assumed leading roles as an NS delegate in the Petrograd Soviet of Worker's and Soldier's Deputies, with strong engagement on agrarian issues. He favoured co-operation of the Soviet with the (Kadet) Provisional Government, and in May 1917 joined the coalition government then formed as minister of food supplies. In October, he was deputy chairman of the pre-parliament council, and after the
In the fall of 1922, Peshekhonov was included in the list of intellectuals to be exiled abroad by a Central Committee decree (although he does not seem to have travelled on the famous "Philosophers' ships" that took the bulk of them to Germany). In exile, he wrote extensively about the consequences of the revolution, particularly the idea of vlast, or state sovereignty, and critiqued the Bolsheviks:
With [the Bolshevik] takeover, they so to speak finished off any effect Russian state vlast: they decisively destroyed the army and swept off the face of the earth even those rudiments of a new state apparatus that the Provisional Government had tried to create. The country was thrown literally into anarchy. The Bolsheviks took even longer to re-establish the state apparatus than to recreate the army - and not because this task was so inherently difficult, but because they had no idea of how to go about it...But bit by bit they learned, and among them some talent even became evident...The state apparatus cannot yet be called complete [in 1922]: there is much that is clumsy, unnecessary, inexpedient, and even absurd.[1]
Exiled against his will, more left-wing than most of his co-expellees, Peshekhonov unhappily pursued his economic and political studies in Berlin and Prague, but repeatedly applied for permission to return to the Soviet Union. This was never granted, but eventually he was given a post as a consultant to the Soviet Trade Mission in Riga, where he died in 1933. His remains were permitted to return and buried in Leningrad.
References
- ^ a b Lih, Lars T., "Not Marx, Not Locke, But Hobbes: The Meaning of the Russian Revolution" (PDF), Crisis & Critique, vol. 4, pp. 211–232, retrieved 2022-03-02
- ISBN 978-0-674-00907-3.
- ISBN 978-1-5381-3981-3.
External links
- Biography (in Russian)
- Biography (in Russian)
- Biography (in Russian)
- Biographical entry (Russian Wikipedia)
- Lesley Chamberlain, The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, London: Atlantic Books, 2006, passim.