Lev Alter

Born June 18, 1907, in Anan’ev, Odessa Province; died Feb. 25, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet economist, doctor of economics (1959), professor. Member of the CPSU from 1932.

Al’ter graduated from the N. K. Krupskaia Academy of Communist Education in 1929. From 1933 through 1968 he worked in the system of the Gosplan (State Planning Commission) of the USSR: he was on the editorial board of the Journal Planovoe khoziaistvo (Planned Economy) from 1938 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1960, and from 1960 he was the deputy director and leader of the sector for the study of foreign economic theories and programming of the Scientific Research Economics Institute of the Gosplan of the USSR. He participated actively in preparing the five-year plans and in working out the General Perspectives of the economic development of the USSR. From 1933 he was an instructor at Moscow State University and other institutes of higher learning. Al’ter is the author of scientific works on questions of planning, the economic competition of two systems, the applications of mathematics in economics, criticism of the bourgeois political economy, and the history of economic studies. His main work, The Bourgeois Political Economy of the USA (1961), as well as a series of other works, has been republished abroad.