Founder of CEMI and architect of SOFE: the mathematician who tried to redesign the planned economy
Late 1960s: CEMI forecast Soviet growth would slow. Gosplan's chairman refused to send it to the Politburo. To avoid charges of 'ideological heresy,' the authors burned the report on a bonfire in Moscow's Neskuchny Garden.
The economist who institutionalized mathematical optimization in Soviet central planning. Appointed in 1963 on Nemchinov's recommendation as CEMI's first director, he led it for 22 years and built the theoretical foundations of SOFE, extending Kantorovich's linear programming into a nationwide planning architecture. As Academician-Secretary of the Economics Department (1971–1986), he elevated mathematical economics to an official agenda of Soviet economic science and served as scientific director of Gosplan's Automated System of Planned Calculations. A WWII chemical-troops officer who reached Berlin, he won the USSR State Prize in 1970.
Career Timeline
- 1949–1956Assistant, docent, professor, head of department of chemical industry economics, MITKhT
- 1953–1958Prorector, Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology
- 1962Corresponding member, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1963–1985Founder and first director, CEMI
- 1964Full member (academician), USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1965–1988Founding editor-in-chief, Economics and Mathematical Methods
- 1967–1983Member, Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1971–1986Academician-Secretary, Department of Economics, USSR Acad. of Sciences
- 1987–2006Advisor to the Presidium, USSR/Russian Academy of Sciences