Gorbachev's chief economic adviser and the market-reform architect of perestroika
Perestroika is a revolutionary renewal of the whole of Soviet society — growth cannot be separated from democratization and glasnost. (1988)
Armenian mathematical economist born in Tbilisi. As director of Novosibirsk's IEiOPP (1966–1984), he shaped the economics of Siberian development and the BAM railway, and founded the journal EKO. In 1985 he became Gorbachev's chief economic adviser, proposing enterprise autonomy, market elements, and foreign trade opening within the planned economy. He was Academician-Secretary of the Academy's Economics Department (1986–1989) and after the Soviet collapse served as rector of the Academy of National Economy (1989–2002), training Russia's post-Soviet managerial class.
Career Timeline
- 1955–1961Economist at the State Committee on Labour and Wages
- 1961–1966Sector head at Novosibirsk IEiOPP; director at 33
- 1966–1984Director of IEiOPP; chair of BAM science council; founded and edited EKO
- 1974Full academician of USSR Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1964)
- 1985–1989Gorbachev's economic adviser; chair of Commission for the Study of Productive Forces
- 1986–1989Academician-Secretary of Economics Department; Academy Presidium member
- 1989–2002Rector of the Academy of National Economy under the USSR, then Russian government
- 2002–현재Chair of Economic Theory and Policy at the Academy; continued publishing
Related historical events
The Economic Reform Blueprint of Perestroika
Aganbegyan conceived perestroika's economic reform not as institutional tinkering but as 'revolutionary renewal.' He diagnosed the Soviet economy's core problem as a mismatch between the 'administrative method of management' and new social realities. After becoming Gorbachev's chief economic adviser in 1985, he advanced reforms on three axes. First, reorient resource allocation from heavy-industry priority toward social needs: housing, food, health, and education. Second, grant state enterprises real autonomy through khozraschyot (full cost accounting), so that firms operated on their own revenues. Third, introduce market mechanisms stepwise within the planned economy and loosen the foreign-trade monopoly. This built on NEP and the 1965 Kosygin reform but was more fundamental in treating glasnost and democratization as inseparable conditions for economic change. In his 1988 book The Challenge: Economics of Perestroika, Aganbegyan presented this framework directly to Western audiences: the first time a Novosibirsk-school mathematical economist had translated policy design into a public reform manifesto. The reforms did not resolve the Soviet economy's structural contradictions, but Aganbegyan's blueprint stands as the high-water mark of Soviet reformist thought seeking to reconcile plan and market.