Isaev, Andrei Alekseevich

Born Oct. 19, 1851; died 1924. Russian Populist economist, statistician, and sociologist.

From 1879 to 1893, Isaev was a lecturer at St. Petersburg University and the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl; in 1884 he became a professor at the lyceum. He began his work as a scholar in 1875 at the Moscow province zemstvo (local self-government) executive board. Lenin repeatedly used Isaev’s statistical data and conclusions (for instance, in The Development of Capitalism in Russia, chs. 5 and 6). Isaev’s lectures at the university and the lyceum formed the basis for his books on political economy. He was a proponent of the labor theory of value and was sympathetic to Marxism but gave a reformist interpretation of Marxism. He advocated cooperative socialism. Isaev wrote more than 20 books on political economy, finance, the world economy, and sociology, as well as pamphlets and many articles for journals.