Nikolay Fedorenko
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Nikolay Prokofyevich Fedorenko (Russian: Никола́й Проко́фьевич Федоренко) was a distinguished Russian economist and chemist. He was born on 26(28) April 1917 and died on 1 April 2006.
He was the head of the Central Economic Mathematical Institute(CEMI) in Moscow from 1963 to 1985.
His name is connected with SOFE, the so-called System of Optimal Functioning of the Economy in the Former Soviet Union and in Russia. In Soviet time SOFE had been a controversial approach to use mathematical planning methods in order to improve the Central Planning System. These methods based on the idea of linear programming or Optimal Planning, connected with the name of L.V. Kantorovich. The SOFE approach had been sharply criticized by Marxist ideologicals (Political Economists), who saw the mathematical methods as being too close to Western economic approaches. They were afraid, that the Soviet Political Economy would disappear behind the mathematical formulars, and that Soviet Economics would finally convert to Western Economics, using also mathematical formulars. Interesting was SOFE's vision to connect the different levels of the national economy with computers, which would make the calculation of the mathematical planning formulars. Today one would speak of the use of the internet.
Despite all ideological attacks N.P. Fedorenko always remained at his position in CEMI. Being a Doctor of Economic Sciences, he also was an Honorary Director of CEMI since 1992, a member of the American Econometrics Society (since 1966), a member of the International Economical Society since 1967 and an Honorary Director of the Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics.
It worth to read N.P. Fedorenko's several books about optimal planning and SOFE. Most of them are in Russian, for some of them there are English translations.
The idea of using mathematical planning methods and computers remains actual even in today's globalized economy.
Some sources, all of them are from the 1970-1980s:
Sutela, Pekka (1984), Socialism, Planning and Optimality: A Study in Soviet Economic Thought, Helsinki 1984.
Götz, Roland (1972), Preis und optimale Planung. Zur Diskussion in der Sowjetunion, (Diss.), München 1972.
Zaubermann, Alfred (1975), The Mathematical Revolution in Soviet Economics, London, New York, Toronto 1975.
Drzymalla, Jürgen (1991), Planung im sowjetischen Wirtschaftssystem,(Diss.), Frankfurt/M., Bern, New York, Paris 1991.
Feodorenko, N.P., Nekotorye voprosy teorii i praktiki planirovanija i upravlenia, Moskva 1979.
Fedorenko, N.P., Ju. V. Ovsienko, N. Ja. Petrakov (1983), Vvedenie v teoriju i metodologiju sistemy optimal'nogo funkcionirovanija socialisticeskoj ekonomiki, Moskva 1983.
Fedorenko,N.P., N. Ja. Petrakov (1984), Modelirovanie v processach upravlenija narodnym chozjajstvom, Moskva 1984.
Fedorenko, N.P., I.P. Subkinaja (1983), Ekonomiko-matematiceskie modeli v sisteme upravlenia predprijatijami, Moskva 1983.
This is the website of the Russian Academic of Sciences on N.P.Fedorenko:
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