Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky (3 February 188613 July 1937) was an Old Bolshevik

Old Bolshevik

Old Bolshevik , also Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for those who were members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of whom were either tried and executed by the NKVD during Stalin era purges or died under suspicious...

, an economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

 and a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 faction and, its successor, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

.

Life

Born in Oryol

Oryol

Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...

, he was member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...

 since 1903. In 1904-05, he was member of Ural

Ural (region)

Ural is a geographical region located around the Ural Mountains, between the East European and West Siberian plains. It extends approximately from north to south, from the Arctic Ocean to the bend of Ural River near Orsk city. The boundary between Europe and Asia runs along the eastern side of...

 provincial bureau of the Party; from autumn 1909 in Irkutsk

Irkutsk

Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...

. From March 1917 a delegate on the Chita Soviet. In 1917-18 a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Party. From January 1918, a candidate member of the Ural Provincial Committee of the Bolshevik Party. In 1917-18 joined the Left Communists faction opposing peace with Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

As President of the Presidium

Presidium

The presidium or praesidium is the name for the heading organ of various legislative and organizational bodies.-Historical usage:...

 of the Ural Regional Committee from May 1918, the killing of Nicholas II and his family occurred on Preobrazhensky's watch. In 1920-1921 was Secretary of the Central Committee, and member of the Politburo; in 1921 President of the Financial Committee and a member of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR; Chief of the People's Commissariat of Education; leading Soviet Economist 1920-30, developing the plan for industrialization of the country; an opponent of the NEP

New Economic Policy

The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...

; one of the editors of the newspaper Pravda

Pravda

Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....

 in 1924, a supporter of Trotsky as member of the Left Opposition

Left Opposition

The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...

; 1924-27 a member of the Board of People's Commissariat of Finance. After 1927, expelled from the party "for the organization of illegal antiparty printing house." From January 1928, sent to the Urals and worked in the planning agencies. In summer 1929, together with Karl Radek

Karl Radek

Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....

 and Ivar Smilga

Ivar Smilga

Ivar Tenisovich Smilga , was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in, and member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union.Ivar was born around Valmiera in the Governorate of Livonia , as the son of a forester killed by Russian Government troops in 1906 during the last stage of the Russian...

 wrote a letter claiming a "ideological and organizational break with Trotskyism."

In January 1930, restored in the party and appointed to the Nizhniy-Novgorod Planning Committee; in 1932 member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of the Light Industry, acting head of the People's Commissariat of State Farms. In January 1933, expelled, arrested and interrogated by the GPU

State Political Directorate

The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...

; sentenced to 3 years exile; finally expelled in 1936 and arrested again on 20 December 1936; he refused to confess and on 13 July 1937 he was sentenced to death and shot. He was rehabilitated by the government of Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

 in 1988.

He co-wrote the book The ABCs of Communism

The ABC of Communism

The ABC of Communism is a book written by Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky in 1920 during the Russian Civil War. Originally written to convince the proletariat of Russia to support the Bolsheviks, it became "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge"...

 with Nikolai Bukharin

Nikolai Bukharin

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...

, with whom he would strongly disagree on the industrialization issue. He also wrote The New Economics, a polemical essay on the dynamics of an economy in transition to socialism, Anarchism and Communism and The Decline of Capitalism.

He argued in the new economics that the USSR had to undertake the "primitive accumulation" that early capitalist societies had had to. That is, the peasants' agricultural surplus had to be appropriated to invest in industry. Thus the Soviet Union had to undertake by planning in "socialist primitive accumulation" what England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 had undergone by happenstance in the seventeenth century. This theory was criticized politically and associated with Trotsky and the Left Opposition, but in fact was put into practice by Stalin in the 1930s, as when Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 said, in his speech to The Captains of Industry, that the USSR had to accomplish in a decade what England had taken centuries to do in terms of economic development in order to be prepared for an invasion from the West.

Reference

• Isaac Deutscher
  Isaac Deutscher
  Isaac Deutscher was a Polish-born Jewish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs...
  
   "The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929" (1959)
• Isaac Deutscher "The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940 "(1963)
• Edward Hallet Carr "Socialism in one country,1924-1926"(1959)
• Alexander Nove
  Alexander Nove
  Alexander Nove , FRSE, FBA was a Professor of Economics at the University of Glasgow and a noted authority on Russian and Soviet economic history. According to Ian D...
  
  "The Soviet Economic System "(1977, 3rd edn 1986)