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Alexander Chayanov
Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov (Russian: Александр Васильевич Чаянов; 17 January 1888 – 3 October 1937) was a Russian, then Soviet agrarian economist, scholar of rural sociology, and advocate of agrarianism and cooperatives.
Chayanov was born in Moscow, the son of a merchant, Vasily Ivanovich Chayanov, and an agronomist, Elena Konstantinovna (born Klepikova). He attended a Realschule (1899–1906) and the Moscow Agricultural Institute (1906–1911), becoming an agronomist; he taught and published works on agriculture until 1914, when he began working for various government institutions. In 1912 he married Elena Vasilevna Grigorieva, a marriage that lasted until 1920. In 1921 he married Olga Emmanuilovna Gurevich; they had sons Nikita (born 1922) and Vasily (born 1925).
After the October Revolution, he served on several Soviet committees for agrarian reform and was a member of Narkomzem as well as "holding lecturing and administrative posts at several universities and academies."
He was a proponent of agricultural cooperatives, but was skeptical about the inefficiency of large-scale farms. Chayanov's skepticism was rooted in the idea that households, especially peasant households which practice subsistence farming, will tend to produce only the amount of food that they need to survive. He believed that the Soviet government would find it difficult to force these households to cooperate and produce a surplus. These views were sharply criticized by Joseph Stalin as "defence of the kulaks".
In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the Case of the Labour Peasant Party (Трудовая крестьянская партия), fabricated by the NKVD. The process was intended to be a show trial, but Stalin decided that the case did not look sufficiently convincing and ordered a conviction in a secret trial («в закрытом порядке», "in a closed manner"). In 1932 Chayanov was sentenced to five years in the Kazakhstan labor camps.[citation needed]
In 1937, Chayanov was arrested again and was shot after his name appeared on an execution list signed by Stalin and Molotov.[citation needed]
His wife Olga was repressed as well and spent 18 years in labour camps; she was released in 1955 and died in 1983. Chayanov was rehabilitated in 1987.
Chayanov's major works, Peasant Farm Organisation (originally published in Russian in 1925) and On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems were first translated into English in 1966. Chayanov's theory of the peasant household influenced economic anthropology. The substantivist Marshall Sahlins drew on Chayanov in his theory of the domestic mode of production, but later authors have argued that Chayanov's use of neo-classical economics supports a formalist position.
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Alexander Chayanov
Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov (Russian: Александр Васильевич Чаянов; 17 January 1888 – 3 October 1937) was a Russian, then Soviet agrarian economist, scholar of rural sociology, and advocate of agrarianism and cooperatives.
Chayanov was born in Moscow, the son of a merchant, Vasily Ivanovich Chayanov, and an agronomist, Elena Konstantinovna (born Klepikova). He attended a Realschule (1899–1906) and the Moscow Agricultural Institute (1906–1911), becoming an agronomist; he taught and published works on agriculture until 1914, when he began working for various government institutions. In 1912 he married Elena Vasilevna Grigorieva, a marriage that lasted until 1920. In 1921 he married Olga Emmanuilovna Gurevich; they had sons Nikita (born 1922) and Vasily (born 1925).
After the October Revolution, he served on several Soviet committees for agrarian reform and was a member of Narkomzem as well as "holding lecturing and administrative posts at several universities and academies."
He was a proponent of agricultural cooperatives, but was skeptical about the inefficiency of large-scale farms. Chayanov's skepticism was rooted in the idea that households, especially peasant households which practice subsistence farming, will tend to produce only the amount of food that they need to survive. He believed that the Soviet government would find it difficult to force these households to cooperate and produce a surplus. These views were sharply criticized by Joseph Stalin as "defence of the kulaks".
In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the Case of the Labour Peasant Party (Трудовая крестьянская партия), fabricated by the NKVD. The process was intended to be a show trial, but Stalin decided that the case did not look sufficiently convincing and ordered a conviction in a secret trial («в закрытом порядке», "in a closed manner"). In 1932 Chayanov was sentenced to five years in the Kazakhstan labor camps.[citation needed]
In 1937, Chayanov was arrested again and was shot after his name appeared on an execution list signed by Stalin and Molotov.[citation needed]
His wife Olga was repressed as well and spent 18 years in labour camps; she was released in 1955 and died in 1983. Chayanov was rehabilitated in 1987.
Chayanov's major works, Peasant Farm Organisation (originally published in Russian in 1925) and On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems were first translated into English in 1966. Chayanov's theory of the peasant household influenced economic anthropology. The substantivist Marshall Sahlins drew on Chayanov in his theory of the domestic mode of production, but later authors have argued that Chayanov's use of neo-classical economics supports a formalist position.