Pikhno, Dmitrii

Born Jan. 1 (13), 1853, in what is now Chigirin Raion, Cherkassy Oblast; died July 29 (Aug. 11), 1913, in Kiev. Russian economist. Doctor of economic sciences (1888).

From 1870 to 1874, Pikhno studied at the law faculty of the University of Kiev. In 1877 he became a privatdocent there, lecturing on political economy and statistics, and from 1888 to 1902 he held a chair in economics. In 1885 he became an official on special assignment of the Ministry of Finances in St. Petersburg and prepared materials on the state takeover of private railroads. From 1907 to 1913, Pikhno served in the State Council.

Pikhno is the author of the textbook Fundamentals of Political Economy (1890), an expanded version of his lectures. In political economy he rejected the Marxist labor theory of value and the theory of distribution, defending instead the theory of supply and demand. He worked on problems in the circulation of paper money and on providing a basis for a tsarist financial policy aimed at improving the economic status of the gentry. Pikhno described the first monopolies in Russian industry and called upon gentry entrepreneurs to combine their economic efforts in order to be more successful in the competitive marketplace. He studied the economics of railroad transport, investigating such issues as tariffs, forms and costs of services, and the commercial interests of the railroads. As editor of the newspaper Kievlianin from 1879 to 1907, Pikhno consistently defended the inviolability of gentry landownership and tsarist absolutism. After 1905 he headed the Kiev branch of the Union of the Russian People, a Black Hundreds organization.