Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky

Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky (Russian version) or Myhaylo Tuhan-Baranovsky (Ukrainian version) (1865, Kharkov Governorate - 1919, Odessa) was the Ukrainian politician, statesman, and a noted Russian-Ukrainian economist, a tutor of Nikolai Kondratiev. He was the famous Russian economist from Little Russia who was credited with the presentation of the hypothesis of the long waves in capitalist development. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 1899. He is the author of numerous works concerning the value theory, the distribution of a social revenue, history of managerial development, and fundamentals of cooperative managerial activities.

Early life

He was born in the village of Solonom, Kharkov Governorate. His father's genealogical line descends from the Lipka Tatar^[1] settlers in 14th-century Lithuania (full name - Tugan-Mirze-Baranovsky), his mother was an ethnic Ukrainian from the Poltava region. Tugan-Baranovsky graduated from the Natural-Mathematical and Law-Economics Departments of Kharkiv University, supplementing his studies in England (1892). His first scientific work he published in the journal Yuridicheskiy Vestnik (Jurisprudence Informer), "The study of a marginal utility of consumer goods as the reason for their value" (Uchenie o predel'noi poleznosti khoziaystvennykh blag kak prichina ikh tsennosti), in which he spoke critically of the labor theory of value and the marginal utility. He also wrote several biographical notes on lives of Proudhon and J. S. Mill. For his publication The Industrial crises in contemporary England, their reasons and influence on public life Tugan-Baranovsky received the title of Magister in Political Economics from Moscow University in 1894. In 1895 he became a member of the Free Economical Association, of which he became the chairman in 1896. There he was an active participant of the forum discussions between Narodniks and Marxists. Along with Peter Struve he became a supporter of what V.I. Lenin and others called legal Marxism. Since 1895 Tugan-Baranovsky was privat-dotsent (unremunerated lecturer) in Political Economics at Sankt Petersburg University, from where he was fired in 1899 for liberal views. During this time there his work The Russian Factory in Past and Present appeared,^[2] for which in 1898 he received a doctorate from Moscow University

Interest in Neokantianism

In 1901-1905 Tugan-Baranovsky participated in the public life of the Poltava region where he joined the local zemstvo (a form of local government). Later he returned to Saint-Petersburg, lecturing as private docent and as professor in the economics departments of various local polytechnic and commercial institutes and also at the private university of Shaniavsky in Moscow. During the early years of the 20th century he completely moved away from the popular views of legal Marxism towards the neokantianism that is reflected in his various works regarding the cooperative movement. In 1901-1902 Tugan-Baranovsky published his "Notes from the History of Political Economics" in the journal Narodnoe Bagatstvo (National Wealth), where he described the history of economics doctrines in the Russian Empire, and "Notes of the Newest History in Political Economics" (1903). This work was translated into German in 1915. Later he published various other works in Russian and German as well. In 1919 his first publication in Ukrainian appeared, Cooperation, its nature and goals. Other works continued to appear up until 1923. Since 1906 he was the chief editor of Vestnik Kooperatsii (Cooperative Digest). Before World War I he worked, along with Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and other Ukrainian academicians, on the encyclopedia Ukrainsky narod v ego proshlom i nastoyaschem (The Ukrainian nation in its past and present). As the member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists quit the General Secretariat on November 20, 1917 in the protest to the proclamation of the Third Universal of the Central Rada that advocated a wider autonomy to Ukraine.

Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky was one of the founders of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, as well as the Secretary of Finance of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. His major work is The Russian Factory in Past and Present (1898).

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