Aleksandr Vasil’vevich Chayanov

Background

Alexander was born in Moscow on the 17th of January 1888. His father was a merchant and his mother was from the middle class.

Education

Alexander completed his degree work under the guidance of Alexey Fortunatov (Russian agronomist and statistician), and his classmate and friend was Nikolai Vavilov (Russian and Soviet geneticist, botanist and plant breeder).

Career

During the work of Alexander was writing more than 150 works on various issues of agriculture.

From 1917 worked for Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic People’s Commissariat of Agric and State Planning Committee. Headed chair, Economy Faculty, Timiryazev Agric Academy. Lecturer in econ, Communist Academy.

Supporter of neo-populism in peasant question. Opposed collectivization of agric and advocated a cooperative system under which farms should operate individually as public enterprises linked to the state by a cooperative framework. Although he subsequently repudiated these ideas and acknowledged the ’’historical necessity of collectivization” he was accused of belonging to rightist opposition and of founding with Kondrat’yev ’’counterrevol" Labor and Peasant Party, which had connections with "interventionist” group of Ind Party.

1930 sentenced for counter-revol activities and sabotage of agric in Kondrat’ycv-Chayanov-Sukhanov trial. Wrote economic textbooks, including Kurs kooperatsii (A Course on Cooperation).

Achievements

• An active participant in the February revolution. At the All-Russian Congress of the co-operative (1917), he was elected a member of the All-Russian Congress of the co-operative - the supreme governing body of the cooperative movement.

Works

• book

  • Essays on the theory of labor economy

  • A short course of cooperation

  • What is the agrarian problem?

  • The main ideas and forms of peasant cooperatives

• lectures

  • A food problem

• translation

  • The Theory of Peasant Co-Operatives.

Views

Peaceful coexistence among Soviet and Western block is a continuation of the class struggle between the socialist and capitalist worlds, but not based on armed conflict. The conflict is mainly economical.

Connections

Father:

Vasily Chayanov

Mother:

Elena Chayanova