Kaufman, Illarion Ignatevich

Born July 5, 1848, in Odessa; died 1916. Russian economist.

Kaufman graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1869 and was a professor at St. Petersburg University from 1893 to 1916. A specialist in the field of monetary circulation, credit, and finances, he wrote on the history of Russian finance. In 1872, Kaufman published one of the first reviews of K. Marx’s Das Kapital in the journal Vestnik Evropy (Messenger of Europe), no. 5. It was, in the words of V. I. Lenin, remarkable for its correct exposition of the essence of Marx’s materialistic-dialectic method (Poln. sobr. sock, 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 92). Kaufman noted in his review that Marx had studied the principles of the rise, development, and decline of capitalism. However, because of the limited nature of his bourgeois world view, Kaufman could not comprehend or adopt the idea of the historical revolutionary role of the proletariat.