Nemchinov, Vasilii

Born Jan. 2 (14), 1894, in the village of Grabovo, located in present-day Penza Raion, Penza Oblast; died Nov. 5, 1964, in Moscow. Soviet economist and statistician. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1940), academician of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948). Member of the CPSU from 1940.

Nemchinov graduated from the economics division of the Moscow Commercial Institute in 1917. Between 1928 and 1948 he was deputy head of the subdepartment of statistics at the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy and from 1940 until 1948 was also the institute’s director. From 1949 to 1963 he was chairman of the Council for the Study of Productive Forces. From 1947 he was also a professor in the subdepartment of political economy at the Academy of Social Sciences of the CPSU Central Committee.

In 1958, Nemchinov organized the first laboratory for mathematical economic research in the USSR; in 1963 this laboratory was expanded to create the Central Economic Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Between 1953 and 1959, Nemchinov was academician-secretary of the Division of Economic, Philosophical, and Legal Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His main works dealt with the theory and practice of Soviet statistics, including studies of the social and economic structure of society, survey theory, and methodological problems of the objective measurement and analysis of mass-scale economic phenomena; the development of productive forces and the composition of social production; methodologies for the study of labor productivity; the development of models of a planned economy; and economic evaluation.

Nemchinov was a member of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1953 until 1962. He became a full member of the International Statistical Institute in 1958 and an honorary member of the British Royal Statistical Society in 1961. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1946 and received the Lenin Prize in 1965 for his participation in the scientific development of methods of linear programming and economic modeling. He received three Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and a number of medals.