Alexander Chayanov

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Alexander V. Chayanov, Александр Васильевич Чаянов (1888-October 3, 1937) was a notable Soviet agrarian economist and rural sociologist.

He was a proponent of agricultural cooperation, but was skeptical with respect to indiscriminate introduction 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 Stalin as "defence of kulaks". However, Chayanov was ultimately shown to be right about the problems with Soviet agricultural planning.

In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the "Case of the Labour Peasant Party" (Трудовая крестьянская партия), fabricated by NKVD. The name of the party was taken from a science fiction book written by Chayanov in 1920s. The process was intended to be a show trial, but it fell apart, due to the strong will of the defendants. Nevertheless on the secret trial in 1932 Chayanov was sentenced to 5 years in Kazakhstan labor camps. On October 3, 1937 Chayanov was arrested again, tried and shot the same day.

His wife was repressed as well and spent 18 years in labor camps.

Chayanov was rehabilitated in 1987.

Chayanov's major works, Peasant Farm Organization (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.