BAZAROV, VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVICH

(1874–1939), Marxist philosopher and economist.

Born Vladimir Alexandrovich Rudnev in Tula and educated at Moscow University, Vladimir Bazarov (his chosen pseudonym) joined the Bolsheviks in 1904 and produced a Russian translation of Capital between 1907 and 1909. Before 1917 his most important works were philosophical, and his key associate was Alexander Bogdanov; after 1917 his most important contributions were economic, and his key associate was Vladimir Groman. Attacked by Vladimir Lenin in 1908 as an idealist and for criticizing Georgy Plekhanov's materialism, in fact Bazarov was of positivist philosophical persuasion. After 1900, Bogdanov and Bazarov had attempted to defend their interpretation of Marx against the Legal Marxist revisionists. Instead of the neo-Kantian notion that the individual person must always be treated as an end, never solely as a means, Bazarov championed the collectivist ideal and the proletarian-class perspective, the fusion of human souls as the supreme outcome of communism. Even so Lenin labeled Bazarov a "Machist."

After the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, Bazarov became a leading Gosplan (State Planning Commission) commentator on the restoration process occurring in the Soviet economy and on the principles of drafting perspective plans as the first specification of the general plan. He advocated a combination of two methods of planning, one teleological (focusing on ultimate goals), the other genetic (focusing on existing trends), the former predominating in industry, the latter in agriculture. Bazarov analyzed cyclical and secular economic development using models imported from natural science, namely wave mechanics and chemical equilibrium, and he warned of a tendency toward relative underproduction in Soviet-type economies. He also proposed criteria for optimal plans and methods for estimating the structure of consumer demand. Bazarov was arrested in 1930 and bracketed with Menshevik wreckers.

See also: gosplan

bibliography

Bazarov, Vladimir A. (1964). [1925]. "On 'Recovery Processes' in General." In Foundations of Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth, ed. Nicholas Spulber. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jasny, Naum. (1972). Soviet Economists of the Twenties. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Vincent Barnett