Vladimir Zheleznov

Born Mar. 23, 1869, in the village of Odverskoe, present-day Shar’ia Raion, Kostroma Oblast; died in 1933. Russian bourgeois-democratic economist.

Zheleznov graduated from the law faculty of the University of Kiev in 1892. He lectured on political economy and statistics. Zheleznov’s economic views were eclectic; he attempted to combine different, mutually exclusive theories. In his book Essays on Political Economy (1902), Zheleznov utilized ideas of classical English political economy as well as tenets of Marxist economic theory. Zheleznov affirmed the labor theory of value, subsequently tending to the marginal utility theory and, like M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii and other economists, regarded the two theories as complementing each other. Zheleznov accepted the Marxist tenet of the relative deterioration of the working class, supported the implementation of social reforms, criticized monopolies, and sympathized with socialist theories, although he did not understand their revolutionary essence. After the October Revolution, Zheleznov worked in the People’s Commissariat of Finances of the USSR.