Vladimir Bazarov
Vladimir Alexandrovich Bazarov (Russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович База́ров; 8 August [
Early career
Early years
Vladimir Alexandrovich Rudnev was born on 8 August 1874 (N.S.) in Tula, Russian Empire.
The son of a doctor and nobleman, A. M. Rudnev, he enrolled in the Tula classical gimnaziia (high school) in 1884, and graduated in the spring of 1892.
In the autumn of 1892, Rudnev enrolled in the faculty of natural sciences of Moscow University.
In exile
Bazarov was expelled from Tula in 1899 and emigrated to Germany, settling in
Return to Russia
In the fall of 1901, Bazarov returned to Russia to serve as a member of the Moscow Social Democratic Committee.[1] He was soon again arrested for his political activity, however, this time to be exiled for three years to Siberia.[1] In 1904, Bazarov joined the
Also in this period Bazarov joined with his old Tula comrades Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov and Alexander Bogdanov in retranslating and publishing a new Russian-language edition of the three volumes of Capital by Karl Marx.[6] This edition of the book gained recognition as the basic Russian translation and was reissued for decades in the Soviet Union, although for political reasons any mention of the participation of Bazarov and Bogdanov in the translation was later avoided.[6]
Bazarov also became interested in philosophy during the first decade of the 20th century, coming to reject Marx's formulaic dialectical materialism in favor of the use of the scientific method to observe and theorize about human behavior, as espoused by the Austrian Ernst Mach and the German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius.[6] The Bolshevik supporters of the "empirical-criticism" of Mach and Avenarius, including Bazarov, Bogdanov, and Nikolai Valentinov, were soon the target of a bitter polemic by Lenin published in 1909, Materialism and Empirio-criticism.[1] This dispute created a rift with Lenin. In May 1908, Bazarov and Bogdanov were in Capri, as guests of the writer Maxim Gorky, who prevailed upon Lenin to join them, in the hope of brokering a reconciliation. The attempt failed. Lenin told them: "We will simply have to separate for two or three years."[7] Bazarov continued to be an active Marxist, without being a member of either of the rival factions, the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks.
In 1911, Bazarov was arrested once again and was deported once more, this time a three-year sentence to Astrakhan.[1] In November 1912, Bazarov joined with Bogdanov, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Gorky, and Lenin, writing for a new paper in St. Petersburg called Pravda.[8]
During the years of World War I, Bazarov wrote for various radical publications, including Gorky's radical daily, Novaya zhizn' (New Life).[9]
After the 1917 revolution
Following the
In 1922, Bazarov joined the staff of the
Together with Groman, Bazarov was influential in developing the idea that a diminishing rate of growth was an earmark of economies such as that of the Soviet Union which were in the process of recovery.[11] Although in retrospect the observation seems obvious, the "theory of the leveling-off curve" espoused by Groman and Bazarov postulated that an economy with substantial reserves of idle capacity would initially show an inordinately rapid pace of growth as productive capital returned to use, with this rate tapering off as available plant approached full capacity.[12]
In 1924 Bazarov published a pamphlet entitled Towards a Methodology for Strategic Planning in which he further expanded his ideas on the development of central planning procedures as the Soviet economy moved from recovery to expansion.[13] Bazarov remained convinced that central direction of economic investment would provide the impetus for accelerated economic growth, speaking in 1926 of the "hope to overtake and surpass in our development the advanced countries of the capitalist world."[14]
Bazarov was a staunch advocate of using material incentives to motivate the
Bazarov was a voice in the Soviet planning apparatus for a rational rate of growth. In response to a draft
1931 Menshevik Trial
Bazarov was arrested by the Soviet secret police during the summer of 1930. At his interrogation of 15 August 1930, he signed a deposition acknowledging his participation in a group with other economists who had been arrested and interrogated by the GPU, including his friend and co-worker Groman and former Socialist Revolutionary Party member Nikolai Kondratiev.[19]
In 1931 the Menshevik Trial was held charging "Mensheviks" in the state planning apparatus with the "
Groman, the star figure among the accused, damned himself and his colleagues with testimony that at Gosplan they had spent their time
"Putting into the control figures and into the surveys of current business planning ideas and deliberately distorted appraisals antagonistic to the general Party line (lowering the rates of expansion of socialist construction, distorting the class approach, exaggerating the difficulties), stressing the signs of an impending catastrophe (Groman) or, what is close to this, assigning a negligible chance of success to the Party line directed toward the socialist attack (Bazarov, Gukhman)..."[22]
Although excluded from the public trial which besmirched him, Bazarov was tried in secret and sentenced to a term of prison for his alleged wrecking activities.[23] A December 1931 letter from the USSR published in the Menshevik journal Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (Socialist Herald) reported that Bazarov was being held at that time in a political "isolator" at Yaroslavl.[24]
Death and legacy
Bazarov died on 16 September 1939 from pneumonia in Moscow. He was 65 years old at the time of his death.
In 1999 a two volume collection of documents relating to the 1931 Menshevik Trial was published in Russia. Included were the text of several handwritten depositions collected from Bazarov during the process of his interrogation during the summer of 1930.[25]
Works
In Russian
- (Social Movements of the Middle Ages and Reformation). With I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov. (c. 1898).
- "Авторитарная метафизика и автономная личность" (Authoritarian Metaphysics and Personal Autonomy), in the collection Очерки реалистического мировоззрения (Studies of Realistic Outlook), 1904.
- «Анархический коммунизм и марксизм» (Communist Anarchism and Marxism). 1906.
- «На два фронта» (On Two Fronts). 1910.
- На пути к социализму: Сборник статей (On the Path to Socialism: A Collection of Articles). Kharkov: Prosvieshchenie, 1919.
- "«Ножницы» и плановое хозяйство" ("The Scissors" and Planned Economy). Экономическое обозрение, 1923, No. 10.
- "К методологии перспективного планирования (Towards a Methodology for Strategic Planning).
- "К вопросу о хозяйственном плане." (On the Question of an Economic Plan). Экономическое обозрение, 1924, No. 6.
- "Темп накопления и «командные высоты»" (The Rate of Accumulation and the "Commanding Heights"). Экономическое обозрение, 1924, No. 9-10.
- "О методологии построения перспективных планов. (On the Methodology of Long-Term Planning). Плановое хозяйство, 1926, № 7.
- "Кривые развития» капиталистического и советского хозяйства." (The "Curves of Development" of Capitalist and Soviet Economy). Плановое хозяйство, 1926, No. 4.
- Использование бюджетных данных для построения структуры городского спроса в перспективе генерального плана (Using Cost Data to Construct the Structure of Urban Demand in the Perspective of the General Plan), 1927.
Bazarov's translations into Russian
- Karl Marx, Das Kapital. With I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov. General editor, A. Bogdanov. 1905–07.
- Очерки по истории Германии в XIX веке. Т. 1. Происхождение современной Германии. (Studies in the History of Germany in the 19th Century: Vol. 1: The Origin of Modern Germany). With I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov. St. Petersburg, 1906.
- Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy by Émile Boutroux with a Preface by the Translator, St Petersburg: Shipovnik Publishers, 1910).
- Элементы философии биологии 1911 by Felix Le Dantec (Elements de philosophie biologique – Elements of Biological Philosophy)[26]: 106
Translations of Bazarov into English
- What is needed for socialism?, Novaya Zhizn, No. 190/184, 1/14 December 1917, p. 1;
- July or December?, Mysl', Kharkov, No. 5. February 1919.
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Naum Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties: Names to Be Remembered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972; pg. 124.
- ISBN 978-0-230-11373-2.
- ^ Robert C. Williams, The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904-1914. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986; pg. 35.
- ^ a b Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the CPSU, "The Neutral Group of Social Democrats in Berlin," in Lenin, Collected Works: Volume 36: 1900-1923. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966; pg. 624, fn. 82. Direct translation of the same note in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: Tom 46: Pisma 1893—1904. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1964; pg. 489, fn. 109.
- ^ Shmidt, O.Yu. (chief editor) Bukharin, N.I. et al (eds) (1926). Большая советская энциклопедиа, Volume 4. Moscow. p. 334.
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b c d e Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 125.
- ^ Krupskaya, Nadezhda (Lenin's widow) (1970). Memories of Lenin. Panther. p. 160.
- ^ Williams, The Other Bolsheviks, pg. 170.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pp. 124-125.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pp. 125-126.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 127.
- ^ Alexander Erlich, The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-1928. [1960] Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967; pg. 60.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 126.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 128.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 130.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 133.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pp. 130-131.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 134.
- ^ "Protokol dopros Bazarova Vladimira Aleksandrovicha ot 15-go avgusta 1930 goda" (Transcript of the Deposition of Vladimir Alexandrovich Bazarov of August 15, 1920) in A.L. Litvin (ed.), Men'sheviistskiii protsess 1931 goda: Sbornik dokumentov v 2-kh knigakh. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999; vol. 1, pp. 46-48.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 136, citing the transcript of Groman's trial testimony published in Protsess kontrrevoliutsionnoi organizatsii Men'shevikov (1 marta—9 marta 1931): Stenogragramma sudebnogo protsessa. Moscow: Sovetskoe Zakonodatel'stvo, 1931; pg. 69.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 137.
- ^ Naum Jasny, Soviet Industrialization, 1928-1952. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961; pg. 69, quoting Protsess kontrrevoliutsionnoi organizatsii Men'shevikov, pg. 37.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 137, citing an article in Pravda of December 24, 1938.
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pp. 137-138.
- ^ See: Litvin (ed.), Men'sheviistskiii protsess 1931 goda, vol. 1, pp. 46-53.
- ISBN 978-1-85972-678-5
Further reading
- Naum Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties: Names to Be Remembered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
- E.B. Koritskii (ed.), Каким быть плану: Дискуссии 20-х годов: Статьи и современный комментарий (How the Plan was Made: The Discussion of the 20s: Articles and Contemporary Commentary). Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1989.