Manuilov, Aleksandr

Born Feb. 28, 1861; died July 20, 1929. Russian economist, doctor of economics (1901), professor.

Manuilov graduated from the law department of the University of Novorossiia (Odessa, 1883). He began scholarly and pedagogical work in political economy in 1888. In 1901 he became head of a subdepartment at Moscow University, becoming assistant rector in 1905 and serving as rector from 1908 to 1911. He was dismissed by the tsarist government for attacking the “extremes” of Stolypin’s agrarian legislation. In the 1890’s he was a liberal Narodnik (Populist), later becoming a Constitutional Democrat (Cadet) and a member of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party. Manuilov’s draft on agrarian reform (1905) was the basis for the Cadets’ agrarian program. V. I. Lenin sharply criticized Manuilov, calling him one of “the bourgeois liberal friends of the muzhik who desire the ‘extension of peasant land ownership’ but do not wish to offend the landlords” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 11, p. 126, note).

At the beginning of his scholarly career Manuilov accepted the labor theory of value. In 1896 he translated K. Marx’ work A Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy (Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie). During the years of reaction he espoused subjectivist and psychological views in political economy. In 1917 he was minister of education of the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution in 1917 he emigrated but soon returned and cooperated with Soviet power. He participated in the orthographic reform (1918). In 1924 he became a member of the board of Gosbank (State Bank). He taught in higher educational institutions. Changing to Marxist positions and relying on Lenin’s works, he criticized the revisionists and neo-Narodniks on the agrarian question.