Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Andrei

Born July 4 (16), 1808, on Naprasnovka khutor (privately owned homestead) in what is now Novgorod-Severskii Raion, Chernigov Oblast; died Dec. 24, 1881 (Jan. 5, 1882), in St. Petersburg. Russian statesman, economist, statistician, and writer.

The son of a nobleman, Zablotskii-Desiatovskii graduated in 1827 from the department of physics and mathematics at Moscow University. He took an active part in P. D. Kiselev’s reforms of the status of the state peasants. From 1837 to 1859 he served in the Ministry of State Domains, becoming editor of the Zhurnal ministerstva gosudarstvennykhimushchestv in 1841. In the same year he traveled through the interior provinces to study the peasantry’s condition and presented a memorandum, “On the Condition of the Serf in Russia,” in which a program for the liquidation of serfdom was proposed (published in Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia, vol. 4, 1882, pp. 271-345). In 1859 he became a state secretary in the department of the economy of the State Council. In 1867 he became a member of the Committee of Finances and in 1875 a member of the State Council. In connection with the construction of schools for the peasants, he participated in the publication of Village Reading and Manual for the Literate Peasant, among others.