Soviet economist who identified two incompatible regulators, plan and quasi-market, as the core contradiction of the Kosygin reform
"An enterprise cannot simultaneously have two heterogeneous regulators. Just as a car cannot have two drivers with two steering wheels," summing up the failure of the Kosygin reform in The Planned System in Retrospect (2000).
A Soviet and Russian economist, Olsevich graduated from Moscow State University's economics faculty and taught political economy at the Urals Polytechnic Institute. From 1965 until his death he worked at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he led the sector for critical study of foreign economic theories; in his later years he concentrated on the theory of economic transformation and the history of Russian economic thought. In The Planned System in Retrospect (2000), co-authored with Paul Gregory, he identified the core contradiction of the 1965 Kosygin reform as the incompatibility of two heterogeneous regulators, the directive plan and the quasi-market, within a single enterprise, founding the 'two regulators' school of reform analysis.
Career Timeline
- 1951–1957Lecturer in political economy, Urals Polytechnic Institute
- 1957–1962Editor and deputy head, economics section, Foreign Literature Publishing House
- 1962–1965Senior researcher, IMEMO (Institute of World Economy and International Relations)
- 1965–1968Head of world prices sector, Institute of Economics, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1968–1992Head of sector for critical study of foreign economic theories, Institute of Economics
- 1969–2016Professor, Moscow State University economics faculty
- 1992–2016Chief research fellow, Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences