Bunge, Nikolai Khristianovich

Born Nov. 11 (23), 1823, in Kiev; died June 3 (15), 1895, in Tsarskoe Selo. Russian bourgeois economist, statesman, member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1890).

From 1850, Bunge was a professor at the University of Kiev. In 1852 he headed the subdepartment of political economy and statistics there. From 1859 to 1880 (with intervals) he was the rector of the University of Kiev. From 1865 he was manager of the Kiev office of Gosbank (State Bank). In 1880 he became a deputy minister. From 1881 to 1886 he was the minister of finance, and from 1887 to 1895 chairman of the Committee of Ministers. He wrote works on political economy which expounded liberal economic positions and propagandized popularized political economy. In his Essays on Political Economic Literature (1895) he attacked socialism and the teaching of K. Marx. As minister of finance he conducted a protectionist policy, expanded state railway construction, and started the repurchase of private railways. He financed machine-building and metallurgy from the national treasury, saved large enterprises and banks from bankruptcy, and so. He tried to bring order to the budget and to money circulation. He advocated a stronger autocracy and broad bourgeois reforms in the countryside.