Petr Liashchenko

Born Oct. 10 (22), 1876, in Saratov; died July 24, 1955, in Moscow. Soviet economist, specialist in the fields of agrarian problems and the history of the Soviet economy, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1945), and Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1943).

Liashchenko graduated from the physics and mathematics department (1899) and from the economics division of the law department (1900) at St. Petersburg University. In 1903 he became a privatdocent there, lecturing in the law department on political economy, agrarian problems, and statistics (from 1908). From 1913 to 1917 he was a professor at the University of Tomsk (subdepartment of political economy). After the October Revolution he engaged in scientific and pedagogical work in Rostovon-Don (university professor, rector of the Institute of the National Economy), Moscow (the Institute of the Red Professoriat, Moscow State University, the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), and Kiev (senior research associate at the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR).

Liashchenko was one of the first Soviet economists to analyze and summarize the processes of development of the Soviet economy from a Marxist-Leninist point of view. In 1949 he received the State Prize of the USSR. He was awarded two orders.

A reading room named after Liashchenko and based on his personal library has been established at the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.