1927–2015
○ Natural causes
An economist of socialist economic integration and reform
He later argued that stagnation in the Soviet economy gave perestroika its first impulse.
Oleg Bogomolov was a Soviet economist and academic institution-builder who studied international economic relations within the socialist world. His comparative work on Hungarian and Yugoslav reforms examined both the rigidity of planned management and the possible uses of market mechanisms. In 1983, when Yuri Andropov initiated preparations for economic reform, Bogomolov joined the relevant commission and supplied expertise to its deliberations. He later argued for gradual reform that combined markets with social protection, widening the economic options considered during perestroika.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1949Graduated from the Institute of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Foreign Trade
- 1954Received a candidate degree in economics
- 1962–1969Worked in the CPSU Central Committee apparatus and foreign-trade institutions
- 1967–1977Headed the Chair of Economic Geography of Foreign Socialist Countries at Moscow State University
- 1969–1991Director of the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System
- 1981Elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1983Joined the commission preparing Andropov-era economic reform
- 1989–1991Deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR
Related historical events
Reform Advocate Inside and Outside Institutions, 1993-2007
Bogomolov remained active in both research institutions and state bodies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He served as a deputy in the Russian State Duma from 1993 to 1995, where he was deputy chairman of the International Affairs Committee as a member of the Democratic Party of Russia faction and also chaired the economic committee of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Earlier, from 1989 to 1991, he had been a deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.
His role as an academic institution-builder also peaked in this period. From 1969 to 1998 he directed the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System, which was reorganized in 1990 as the Institute of International Economic and Political Studies (IMEPI RAN), and he remained its honorary director. He was also active internationally, serving on the executive committee of UNESCO's International Social Science Council from 1996 to 2000, and from 1999 he headed the world economy chair at the State University of Management.
In his writing he broadened his focus to international comparison and globalization. In 1998 he published a book examining reforms through the lens of international comparisons, followed in 2003 by a study of the anatomy of the global economy and in 2007 by a textbook on the world economy in the age of globalization. He distinguished his own position from that of market fundamentalists, holding that it was important to show that the market could produce good results without sacrifice and loss, and that the argument for choosing either a command-administrative or a market economy was unconvincing.