Egor Gaidar as a Marxist By Vladimir Shlapentokh Professor of Sociology, Michigan State University
Egor Gaidar was not the only professional economist who held a high position in the government of his country. Anne Robert-Jacques Turgot served as a high administrator under Louis XY and his grand son Louis XYI. David Ricardo was an influential member of the British House of Commons. Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk served as minister of finance during the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Joseph Schumpeter was the Austrian Minister of finance. And finally, John Maynard Keynes was an influential economic adviser to the British prime minister. Nobody would compare Gaidar’s status as an economist to any of these giants of economic science. However, none of these prominent figures influenced the economic life in their country as much as Gaidar did in his capacity as the Russian prime minister. Whatever are the assessments of Gaidar’s reforms in post-Soviet Russia, they changed the country radically, for better or worse.
With such a record as one of the greatest revolutionaries of the twentieth century as well as one of the best Russian economists, each of Gaidar’s big publications deserves attention, particularly his extensive new book, Long Time. Russia in the World. Essays in Economic History (Dolgoie vremia. Rossia v mire. Ocherki ekonomichsekoi istorii, Moscow: Delo, 2005).
The first novelty of this book is the radical change in Gaidar’s attitude toward Marx, especially when compared to his book State and Revolution (Gosudarstvo i revolutsia, Moscow: Evrazia, 1995). Engaged then as he was in a struggle against Communist ideology and its defenders in post-Soviet Russia, Gaidar could not say much good about Marx. Only a few years earlier, in 1993, Gaidar and his family valiantly defied the Communists in the streets of Moscow in the dangerous days of September-October. In his 1995 book, Gaidar did not spare the founder of “scientific Communism” either. Rather, he applied all his sarcastic ammunition to denigrate Marx. With some caveats (“he is a great thinker and a brilliant publicist”), Gaidar associated Marx with “the leaders of great destructive revolutionary movements,” along with Bakunin, Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler (31). Critical of Marx, he wrote that “Marx’s prognoses turned out to be exactly the reverse of reality” (30).
What a difference a new book makes in which Marx in fact dominates Gaidar’s theoretical reasoning. His return to Marx (see his last big publication during the Soviet times, The Economic Reforms and Hierarchical Structures, (Ekonomicheskie reforms i hierachicheskie struktury), Moscow: Nauka, 1990) is full of quotes from Marx. A change in Gaidar’s attitudes toward Marx started in his book Anomalies of Economic Growth (Anomalii ekonomicheskogo rosta, Moscow: Evrazia) published in 1997.
And now, Gaidar, as never before since 1991, demonstrated his full respect for Marx as a source of his theoretical inspiration, not refusing to make critical comments on some elements of Marx’s heritage (64). He cites a dozen famous scholars who praise Marx, including Joseph Schumpeter, Fernand Braudel, John Hicks and Douglass North. Gaidar says good things even about the theory of surplus value, one of Marx’s ideological constructions that substantiates his idea about the class exploitation as the major phenomenon in history: “Even if it looks today archaic and far from life,” it “describes not badly
the realities of agrarian and early industrial societies” (79).
Greeting the much more objective approach to Marx, indeed a great scholar, Gaidar’s new book may amaze the reader that he did not find a more contemporary theoretical framework for his analysis of Russia and the world. Gaidar’s book with Marx at the center of his analysis should indeed flabbergast Russian Communists, haters of Gaidar, as well as Russian liberals and Western admirers of the author.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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