Nikolai Shmelev criticized market reforms in Russia. Shmelev Nikolay Petrovich Shmelev Nikolay Petrovich

Russian economist and writer, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Petrovich Shmelev was born on June 18, 1936 in Moscow.

Graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University in 1958, Doctor of Economics, Professor.

From 1958 to 1961 he was a research fellow at the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

From 1961 to 1968, Shmelev was a senior researcher at the Institute of the World Socialist System of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In 1968, he was appointed lecturer at the Propaganda Department of the CPSU Central Committee.

In 1970, he became the head of the department at the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System, working in this position until 1983.

From 1983 to 1992, Shmelev headed the department of the Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

From 1992 to 1999 he was chief researcher and deputy director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1999, he headed the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The main directions of Shmelev's scientific activity were the world economy and economic reforms in modern Russia. Shmelev’s scientific activity consisted of researching ways for Russia to emerge from long-term international isolation and concerned changes in the domestic economy and foreign economic activity of the country. Shmelev was a specialist in the development of theoretical problems of the global division of labor, the world economy and international economic relations.

From 1989 to 1991, Shmelev was a people's deputy of the USSR, a member of the Supreme Council, and a member of the Committee on Planning and Budgetary and Financial Issues.

He was a member of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation (1991-1993), and was a member of the Human Rights Commission under the President of the Russian Federation.

As a visiting professor, he taught at the Higher School of Economics (Stockholm, Sweden, 1992), Middlebury University (Vermont, USA, 1993), and Hokkaido University (Japan, 1995).

Repeatedly took part in many international conferences at the UN, scientific conferences in the USA, Western Europe, Japan, and many public conferences.

Shmelev began publishing as a prose writer in 1961 - his story “Tin Soldiers” was published in the magazine “Moscow”. After that, he did not publish prose for 26 years. His name became famous after the publication of the article “Advances and Debts” in the magazine “New World” (1987), which became the programmatic economic document of the era of perestroika in the USSR. He published journalistic articles in the magazines “Znamya”, “New World”, “Literary Review”, “Ogonyok”.

Author of about 20 books of prose, including the stories "Performance in honor of Mr. First Minister" (1988), "Mad Greta" (1994), the novels "Sylvester" (1992), "I fell ill on the way" (1995), memoirs " Curriculum vitae" (1997-1998) and other works.

Nikolai Shmelev was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor", the Orders of Honor (1996) and Friendship (2007). Winner of the prize of the International Znamya Foundation for a work that aroused increased reader interest (1997), as well as the prize of the Moscow Writers' Union (1998). Recipient of the Golden Badge of Honor "Public Recognition" (1999).

Nikolai Petrovich SHMELYOV
(born 1936)

Genus. in Moscow in the family of a surveyor engineer. Son-in-law of N.S. Khrushchev. Graduated from economics. Faculty of Moscow State University (1958). Was a member of the CPSU. Doctor of Economics Sciences (1968), professor, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He worked in the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee, the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of World Social Economics. system of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed a department at the Institute of the USA and Canada (1990), was chief. researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, worked abroad: at the Stockholm Institute of Economics of the USSR and Eastern Europe (1992). Director of the Institute of Europe RAS (since 1999).
He began publishing as a prose writer in 1961: the story “Tin Soldiers” in the Moscow magazine. After that, he did not publish prose for 26 years. Became a public celebrity after publishing the article: Advances and debts. - “NM”, 1987, No. 6. Published journalistic articles in magazines “Znamya” (1988, No. 7; 1989, No. 1, 12), “NM” (1988, No. 4), “LO” (1989 , No. 8), "Spark" (1990, No. 37). Prose is published in magazines: Pashkov House. Tale. - "Banner", 1987, No. 3; Performance in honor of Mr. First Minister. Tale. - "Banner", 1988, No. 3; Field theory. Story. - "Science and Life", 1988, No. 3; Stories. - "October", 1988, No. 5; Sylvester. Novel. - “Banner”, 1991, No. 6-7; Crazy Greta. Tale. - "DN", 1994, No. 9. Published memoirs: Curriculum vitae. - "Banner", 1997, No. 8; 1998, No. 8. Published a book. prose: Last floor. Stories. M., "Ogonyok", 1988; Performance in honor of Mr. First Minister. Stories, stories. M., "Soviet writer", 1988; Sylvester. Novel. M.. "Soviet writer", 1992; Pushkinskaya Square. Stories, stories. Ashgabat, "Turan - 1", 1993; I got sick on the way. Novel, story. M., "Voice", 1995; Advances and debts. Yesterday and tomorrow of Russian economics. reforms. M., "International Relations", 1996; Night voices. Novels and stories. M., "Sunday", 1999; Historical works. M., "Russian Writer", 2001; Pashkov house. M., "Interdialect+", 2001. Sh.'s works were published in translation into French, Spanish, English, German, Italian, Swedish. languages.
Member of the Moscow SP, Russian PEN Center. There was a people USSR deputy from the USSR Academy of Sciences, member of the USSR Supreme Council (1989-92), member of societies. Council "LG" (1990-97), editorial board of the journal "Russian Wealth" (1991-95). Secretary of the Moscow joint venture, member of the editorial board of gas. "Lit. Vesti" (since 1995), editorial board of "LG" (since 2001). Member of the Moscow English Club.
Prizes of the USSR SP named after. M.Shaginyan (1988), "Znamya" foundation (1997), "Venets" (1997).
Source: Dictionary "New Russia: the world of literature" ("Znamya")

Creations:

Novel "Pashkov's House" (1982) - February 2007

Fragments of the novel:

School? The image of Onegin, the image of Pechorin? Positive traits, negative traits that only caused him toothache and nothing else? Hostility towards teachers and their reciprocal hostility towards him, prickly, harsh, who in his childish intolerance did not forgive them either their poor language, or their fear of superiors, or their poorly hidden joy at small gifts and offerings? But here, if you think about it, not everything was as bad as it sometimes seemed: in essence, they were all good people, most of them sincerely loved both school and their children, but they, too, were crushed by life - need, beggarly salary, forty people in the class, mountains of notebooks in the evenings, some commissions, methodologists, inspectors or whoever they were then, no one knows who...
What else? Eternal fear in the house? Silent, hidden melancholy, a hidden, but nevertheless clear to everyone, expectation of a knock on the door at night, conversations in a whisper, with the phone turned off? Well, both father and mother could be understood. A new wave of arrests was rising, several families had already been seized from their house, and the father, no matter how strong his character he had, could not, naturally, feel calm: he was a military engineer, dealt with the acceptance of equipment for reparations, and repeatedly traveled to Austria , to Germany, and then this was in itself, if not a crime, then at least something very alarming, and the surname Gort at that time was far from being one of the best... Don’t swear off prison and pocket money - too After all, Russian thought is a thousand-year-old thought, and it is not without reason that it was born here...

On the agenda of that meeting in the fall of 1956 there was one issue: the expulsion from the party of Associate Professor N. - an informer, murderer, slanderer, who ruined many innocent people with his denunciations. The opinion was unanimous: to expel, expel from the university and, moreover, ask the relevant authorities to initiate a criminal case, so that in future this evil spirit will not be anywhere. However, when they began to vote, one hand suddenly rose against it - it was his hand, Gort. Naturally, he was asked to give an explanation. What exactly he was saying then - hotly, confusedly, hesitating and swallowing his words - now, of course, you can’t remember. But the essence was something like this: N. is a scoundrel, there is no doubt about that, but he is not important, the principle is important - either everyone or no one. But even if it’s everyone, we won’t achieve anything and we won’t solve anything by sending another, almost as significant, to meet one stream of people returning from the camps, because what’s important is not revenge, what’s important are guarantees that nothing like this will ever happen again will not happen again, guarantees are not created by revenge, they are created differently, guarantees are a slow, persistent, positive process, and we must not take revenge, we must work on guarantees, and this associate professor and all the others like him - to hell with them, let them live, potter around somewhere, earn their piece of bread to the best of their ability, in just a generation or two there will of course not be a trace of them left.
It must be said that for everyone present, including the accused, who was cowering somewhere in the corner, behind other people’s backs, his speech was a complete surprise: who, who, but him?! Nobody, of course, heeded his calls - the assistant professor was expelled. He then had to fend off his comrades for more than one evening, again and again explaining to them what was so obvious to himself, but incomprehensible to them, no matter what he said... But it was his family who reacted most painfully. His wife, who was then already in her fifth month, somehow immediately shrank all over, did not raise her eyes to him, in the evenings she sat for a long time with her feet up in a chair and was silent, answering all his questions with short, sometimes almost inaudible “yes-no” ... The mother cried, sighed, wandered from room to room, not finding a place for herself: “Lord, what will happen now, what will happen? What have you done, Sasha? How could you? After all, you have a family now... And my father and I?..” When my father found out about everything, he became furious, cursed him as a fool and did not speak to him at all for a whole week.

No, common sense, sobriety, calculation, moderation have never been popular in Rus'; everyone, one way or another, was looking for a holy idea and called only for it: all - or nothing! We don’t need progress, we don’t need prosperity, we don’t need mercy and human living conditions if it comes from the head and not from the soul. We would rather, together with some new Habakkuk, burn ourselves and burn others - for any fairy tale, for any hope, if only it is from holiness, from foolishness, if only it is from this world and not this... Be baptized, Orthodox Christians , here is a calico banner, and for a single az - into the fire!

“I don’t regret anything, Sasha,” she admitted one evening, lying on his arm. - About nothing... But I can’t forgive myself for anything either... Do you understand? Here it is: I don’t regret, but I don’t forgive either - all together. Do you think it can't be like that? Maybe, believe me... And how I then went hand in hand, and this scumbag, because of whom we broke up with you, and my second husband, and all these friends of mine, this Moscow supposedly elite, who in the morning until the evening he hangs around on commissions... Or sits in the House of Cinema... Oh, Sasha, a beast! You can’t imagine what kind of beast... For the most trashy rag that the Moiseevites or “Berezka” bring, they will kill, strangle, sell anyone they want, even their own sister... Just so that it falls into their hands, not others... But there’s nothing to say about pebbles... It’s Sasha, Chicago, Al Capone, if you interfere, don’t expect mercy, they might actually kill you... They also have people for that... What kind of money is there in Moscow, Sasha, if only you knew!.. What things are being done... And everyone, like devils with their tails, is in one ball... Look, some writer is sitting, they say, famous... Or some boss is important, respectable, everyone respects him, his head is thrown back, his hair is gray... And who is next to him? A thief, and what a thief! But the thief’s wife is a ballerina, his closest friend is a laureate violinist or an icon restorer, his children study in an English school, he goes on vacation to Balaton... And at the other end of the table is also their man, quiet, modest, inconspicuous, smiling, hands He kisses the ladies, but he is the scariest of all! He is the last resort... And all this, Sasha, I went through. I know everything and I know everyone... Thank God, I lost my life as soon as possible, but anything could have happened.
- And your husband - was he one of those people too?..

The story "The Acts of the Apostles" (1985) - August 2002

Story "Top Floor" - December 2001

“One of my relatively young friends - he is forty, I am seventy-three - claims that in the history of mankind only three decided to publicly turn themselves inside out to the end: St. Augustine, Rousseau and Tolstoy. Three or not three - I don’t know, I’m not an expert in this , in any case, I don’t dare to argue. It should be said, however, that my friend is a professional philosopher, a very thoughtful person, and, as I have already had the opportunity to see more than once, he usually knows what he’s talking about.
About two years ago, with his light hand, I read all these famous confessions. I admit, it was a painful reading: it brought me nothing or almost nothing except disappointment and irritation. I have little time left, if any at all, and now, on the threshold of transition, so to speak, to a different system of coordinates, I think I can, without succumbing to the hypnosis of such big names and without fearing at the same time accusations of some hidden personal bias, allow myself to express some things that, in the mouth of a younger person than me, could, I admit, seem at least extravagant, and even worse - outright sacrilege..."
(Fragment)

Short story "Presumption of Innocence" (1977) - August 2002

“His parents separated him quite early, and he already lived alone then, in a cozy one-room apartment, the walls of which, from floor to ceiling, were completely lined with books collected by him. Books were as much his passion as women, and books required no time. less than them: how many times he diligently, putting all the tenderness he was capable of into his voice, lied on the phone, just to evade another date, to stay at home, alone, in an armchair, under a warm, reddish light floor lamp, and slowly, wrapping yourself in a robe and stretching out your feet in slippers, immerse yourself in a world invented by someone else, an unfamiliar one.
But books are a dangerous occupation: there is some kind of poison in them with a barely perceptible cadaverous smell, which gradually, imperceptibly undermines a person, makes him languish, yearn, rush out of the four walls - and where, why? If only someone in all the long thousands of human years could answer this question..."
(Fragment)

Collection of stories "Old Moscow" - December 2007

Old Moscow
Tram from the suburbs
Asian flu
“And I will repay...”
The case of the fur coat
Night voices
Visit
Field theory
Mournful leaf
Protocol
Mansion on Prechistenka

The collection also includes the stories “The Last Floor” and “Presumption of Innocence,” which were previously published on the Internet.

“You probably won’t be long until retirement?
- Not for long? - the old lady grinned. - I appreciate your delicacy, my dear... I, Nikolai Ilyich, am seventy-two, and I have never received a pension. Yes, I don’t even have rights to it.
- How is it?
- Yes, that's it. All the papers, damn them. I always have trouble with them. Just some kind of rock. I worked all my life, I started when I was still a girl, but I couldn’t save any papers. So it turned out that it was time to die, but my experience of a year or two was gone.
- Where did you work before, Natalya Alekseevna?
- Anywhere. She sang, for example, at the Kursk Opera. During the Civil War there was an opera there, but I don’t know how it is now. She taught languages. I worked as a secretary, an accountant... And every time it somehow turned out that I would either lose some necessary paper, or I would write something on it myself... True, it’s true, God knows what I’ll write sometimes. I remember writing to one boss on his paper: “How can you do this, you’re a bad person?!” Well, they kicked me out, of course, from everywhere. Then I decided myself - away from papers, this is not for me. During the war, they flogged old parachutes - do you know there is such a job? No? And I lived like this for several years... I sold ice cream on the streets, I swept the city boulevard. In general, there was a lot of things...
- And no documents have been preserved? No trace?
- Not a trace... In '35, when we had to move out of Leningrad one night, all the papers remained there - I forgot in the chaos... Already here, after the war, our house burned down. She barely managed to jump out... Then the archive was transferred from here to another city. I wrote but they didn’t answer."
(Fragment)

Memoirs "Curriculum vitae" in the magazine "Znamya" 1998 No. 9
Memoirs "Curriculum vitae" in the magazine "Znamya" 2001 No. 2
Memoirs "Once upon a time in Znamya..." in the magazine "Znamya" 2001 No. 1
Journalism "Is there a future for socialism in Russia" in the magazine "Znamya" 1999 No. 11

Links:

Nikolai Shmelev's page in the Magazine Room
Nikolay Shmelev’s page in the project
Nikolai Shmelev: “Look for fools on the other street” in Rossiyskaya Gazeta dated July 27, 2005

Nikolai Petrovich Shmelev – Doctor of Economics, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Even non-economists are widely aware of his article “Advances and Debts,” which at the dawn of our perestroika became an economic revelation, the first sign of truth. But today we decided to talk not with Shmelev the economist, but with Shmelev the writer, the author of three novels, five novellas, and many short stories. Two dozen books by Shmelev have been published in all European languages.

– Nikolai Petrovich, how did it happen that the economist Shmelev became a writer?

– It turned out naturally, like a sprout that grows from somewhere, but where it comes from is unknown. The inner world of a person is not amenable to medical analysis. I only know that at the age of nine I was a stage director and actor in a home theater. I wrote some plays for this children's theater that now seem funny. And already in his student years he wrote more serious things.

– That is, practically the beginning of serious literary studies coincided with the beginning of professional economic activity?

- Yes. But it all started with a game.

– When was the first book written and published?

– Readers are well aware of the book “I Got Sick on the Way,” published more than two years ago. What are you working on now?

– Now, as you can see, on my table there are proofs of the book “Curriculum vitae”, which will be published in the magazine “Znamya”. This is a collection of short stories. After the book “I Got Sick on the Way,” the publishing house “Prosveshcheniye” released a collection that included “Domostroy” Sylvester and my novel “Sylvester”.

– Nikolai Petrovich, as an economist, I am well acquainted with Shmelev the economist. I know Shmelev the man a little. I read many of the works of Shmelev the writer. It seems to me that as a person and as an economist you are much more optimistic than as a writer. The heroine of your novel “I Got Sick on the Way” suggests “to build everyone together a dugout in three steps, put machine guns in the corners of it and shoot back from life.” The hero, Alexey Mamonov, commits suicide. The central scene of the story “Mad Greta” - about the life of the artist Bruegel - was the murder of babies. So, who are you, a deep pessimist?

- I am me. I am not the most cheerful person, although I am very sociable and capable of smiling. But I am not a person with the most cheerful outlook on life. It’s just that when communicating with people there is always an element of self-discipline, especially since I do not consider myself to have the right to impose my mood, my outlook on life on people. This is my feeling, and it does not necessarily coincide with the feelings of those with whom I communicate. And as a writer... What is there to be happy about? The whole life of a person is sad from beginning to end. My favorite saying Bulgakov from “The Master and Margarita” - “God, how sad the evening earth is.” Life is sad. Why did the Lord God arrange it?

– Where does such pessimism come from?

- I will answer in words Verlaine in translation Pasternak:

And there is a mess in the heart,

And it's raining in the morning,

From where, right?

Such blues?

Blues - out of nowhere

But that's the blues,

When not out of luck,

And not for the good.

And in economics, some optimism may be based on the fact that people are not suicides.

– Unlike your hero Mamonov?

- Yes. And the Russian people are not a people of suicide. Someday they will get out of the hole they fell into. But there is a conflict here that, as a writer, always interests me. Even if it is true that society develops through failures in an ascending line, then human life is still too short. Well, we started reforms, but I know that we will get out of them only when my grandchildren are adults. In general, optimism is possible for the nation, for the people. Historical optimism. Moscow was not built at once, life does not immediately change for the better. By historical standards - one generation more, one less - not a tragedy. But in every generation there are living people. They will have no other life.

– And yet, is there a lot of Nikolai Shmelev in Alexey Mamonov?

– The idea of ​​the novel “I fell ill on the way” is the idea of ​​my whole life. Even in my early youth, my father struck me with a question that he repeatedly asked: “Who is crazy – me or the world?” Then I asked the same question all my life: who is crazy - me or life. I feel that this question will be asked in the next generation. What is happening now does not answer this question - the central question of the book, to which neither my father nor I found an answer, and it is unlikely that my children will find an answer.

To the question of how close my hero is to me, I can answer in words Lev Tolstoy who said: “ Natasha Rostova- It's me". The novel “I Got Sick on the Way” is a story of three generations. The first generation is completely based on my father, the second - on me and several other people close to me. The third is fiction. Maybe the heroes of the third generation were not very successful for me; I know the new generation worse. But I insist that I grasped something. Alexei's son Konstantin is a new Russian, but not a representative of the well-known rags and fluff.

– How do you see your reader? Aren't you afraid of being left without a reader at all?

- The question is not easy. Some argue that the reader has disappeared altogether. That people only read junk. For me it's a matter of faith. I think it's fair to say that the more things change, the more things stay the same. They can’t completely kill people’s livers, kill their interest in the colors of life. Whatever the TV, whatever the crowds vulgar led by this Konstantin what's his name... Ernst, no matter how terrible the collapse of vulgarity and bad taste is - well, you never know what people were sick with. Of course, we will not come to our senses soon. People were confused for political, economic, and spiritual reasons. People who are in such confusion have only enough time and energy for TV and a newspaper. But our generation is not the first or the last, and good literature will not end with it.

I know that even now a certain percentage of people I know read seriously. Someone was interested in my books and said kind words. Of course, there are others - like Vladimir Sorokin, a shocking writer who declares that literature is dead and will never come back. Such people will not read anything, except perhaps themselves.

I think that my reader is, perhaps, someone who is not in a hurry, an intellectual, not in a great hurry in life, someone who has a little time and money.

– I often had to discuss with you in various situations about the future of our culture. You usually said that despite all the obvious crisis, you see signs of cultural recovery. What is more in these words - conviction or desire to see what you want to see?

– If we talk about literature, then in Russia for many, many years it was almost the only outlet for people, and therefore occupied a disproportionately large place in our lives. Then all the curtains fell and a torrent of vulgarity and dirt fell upon us. But all this has already happened, we are not the first to go through this. I visited Sweden or the Netherlands during the years of the sexual revolution and saw the shelves of bookstores and stalls littered with related products. And so, we got over the illness and calmed down. And pornography, and much more, have again taken the place in life and in culture that they should occupy. It was so everywhere, and it will be so with us.

“However, in many developed countries of the world, some people engaged in skilled mental work believe that reading fiction is completely unnecessary. It is enough to be a good expert in your professional field and obtain the necessary information, including from the Internet. Why read then? And write books?

– I completely disagree that Europe and America have stopped reading. Look at the circulation of books published there. It is a shame for Russia when books are published in the same editions as in Holland. But I am sure that we will survive everything. Of course, the book will not play the same role as before, but there will be readers.

Another thing is that now we have a lot of technical things that make typography problematic. For example, the wholesale book trade has completely collapsed. As a result, most of the largest publishers work only for Moscow. Even in the Moscow region, books are difficult to reach. So, low circulation does not mean low demand.

Well, as for the glimpses of cultural improvement... Of course, there is more faith here than reality.

– Which classic writer do you think could best describe modern Russia?

– We are a very politicized country. And our sorrows are very politicized. We forget about the self-sufficiency of the individual. The most unbiased, non-politicized person - Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. And it was he who could most fully tell about modern Russian people. Probably, Leo Tolstoy could have successfully dealt with this. This is if we talk about a person, about his soul. And if we recall politics, it would be very useful for modern Russia to look at itself through the eyes of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Bulgakov, Platonov.

– And who, from your point of view, among modern writers, has successfully coped with this task?

- There are no such. To my great regret, all the winners of all the latest literary awards are writers with an exaggerated and one-sided outlook on life. One very decent writer from St. Petersburg, for example, is very proud of his novel about the sex life of Siamese twins. There are several writers I admire, but over the past ten years nothing worthy of admiration has been created in Russia. The current situation in literature is not comparable, unfortunately, with the first years of perestroika, when works appeared Pristavkin, Sergei Kaledin, Tatyana Tolstoy, Mikhail Kuraev.

– Nikolai Petrovich, you are an example of a universal person who successfully realizes himself in various spheres of life, in various professions. This is not at all typical for a Soviet person. Universal people more often evoke feelings of dislike in others than admiration. How do you feel about universalism?

– I can’t make a categorical choice in favor of a generalist or a specialist, both have advantages and disadvantages. Good specialists are often narrow-minded, stupid people. But generalists are in danger of falling into superficiality. But there is a clear advantage to universalism, which I first became convinced of in 1989, when in the elections of people's deputies of the USSR from the USSR Academy of Sciences I was able to get more votes than many others, even than Sakharov. Then one prominent mathematician said: “We must choose Shmeleva, because he is the only one of us who has the whole picture in his head, and not its pieces.”

– Last question: what joke does the writer Shmelev like best?

– Political Hungarian joke (I note that Hungarians consistently occupy one of the first places in Europe in the number of suicides):

“Kun (a character similar to our Rabinovich) comes to the police and says:

- That's it, I'm tired, that's enough, I'm leaving!

- Why? What happened?

– I don’t like your tendency.

– What trend, Kun, what are you talking about?

– I don’t like your attitude towards homosexuals.

- Yes? Interesting. What exactly do you not like?

– Do you remember the times when they were sent to prison?

- We remember. But then there were communists, terror, Soviet occupation...

- No, no, wait. Do you remember the times when they began to be treated?

- We remember. Well, it’s not so bad to treat...

- No no. Do you remember when you said that this is everyone’s personal business?

– But what don’t you like about it? Democracy! What else do you need, Kun?

“You know, I don’t want to live to see the day when this becomes mandatory.”

It often seems to me that “this” is about to become mandatory in our country.

Tatiana POPOVA, MF.

Nikolai Petrovich Shmelev(June 18, 1936, Moscow - January 6, 2014, Moscow) - Russian economist and writer, Candidate of Economic Sciences (1961), Doctor of Economic Sciences (1969), Professor (1977), Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1994), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (26.05 .2000; section of international relations), director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1999), academician of the Academy of Economic Sciences and Entrepreneurship and the Academy of Management.
Graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University (1958). He worked at the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1958-61), the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1961-68 and 1970-83), as a lecturer at the Propaganda Department of the CPSU Central Committee (1968-70), at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1983- 92), Institute of Europe RAS (since 1992). People's Deputy of the USSR (1989-91). Member of the jury of the scientific section of the Triumph Foundation.
Prize winner of the USSR SP named after. M.Shaginyan (1988), the Znamya Foundation (1997), the Crown (1997), the Foundation for the Promotion of Domestic Science in the category “Outstanding Scientists” (2008). Awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor” and the Order of Honor (1996).
Source: Wikipedia
He began publishing as a prose writer in 1961: the story “Tin Soldiers” in the magazine “Moscow”. After that, he did not publish prose for 26 years. He became a public celebrity after the publication of the article “Advances and Debts” (New World, 1987, No. 6). He published journalistic articles in the magazines "Znamya" (1988, No. 7; 1989, No. 1, 12), "New World" (1988, No. 4), "LO" (1989, No. 8), "Ogonyok" (1990, No. 37). Prose is published in magazines: Pashkov House. Tale. - "Banner", 1987, No. 3; Performance in honor of Mr. First Minister. Tale. - "Banner", 1988, No. 3; Field theory. Story. - "Science and Life", 1988, No. 3; Stories. - "October", 1988, No. 5; Sylvester. Novel. - “Banner”, 1991, No. 6-7; Crazy Greta. Tale. - "Friendship of Peoples", 1994, No. 9. Published memoirs: Curriculum vitae. - "Banner", 1997, No. 8; 1998, No. 8. Published a book. prose: Last floor. Stories. M., "Ogonyok", 1988; Performance in honor of Mr. First Minister. Stories, stories. M., "Soviet writer", 1988; Sylvester. Novel. M., "Soviet writer", 1992; Pushkinskaya Square. Stories, stories. Ashgabat, "Turan - 1", 1993; I got sick on the way. Novel, story. M., "Voice", 1995; Advances and debts. Yesterday and tomorrow of Russian economics. reforms. M., "International Relations", 1996; Night voices. Novels and stories. M., "Sunday", 1999; Historical works. M., "Russian Writer", 2001; Pashkov house. M., "Interdialect+", 2001.
The works of Nikolai Shmelev have been published in translation into French, Spanish, English, German, Italian, Swedish. languages.
Member of the Moscow SP, Russian PEN Center. He was a people's deputy of the USSR from the USSR Academy of Sciences, a member of the USSR Supreme Council (1989-92), and a member of societies. Council "LG" (1990-97), editorial board of the magazine "Russian Wealth" (1991-95). Secretary of the Moscow SP, member of the editorial board of the newspaper "Lit. Vesti" (since 1995), the editorial board of "LG" (since 2001). Member of the Moscow English Club.
Prizes of the USSR SP named after. M.Shaginyan (1988), "Znamya" foundation (1997), "Venets" (1997).
Source: Dictionary "New Russia: the world of literature" ("Znamya")

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Nikolai Petrovich Shmelev

Works:

Historical prose
Sylvester

Journalism
Advances and debts

Contemporary Russian and foreign prose
Acts of the Apostles
Pashkov house
Top floor
Presumption of innocence
Curriculum vitae

Nikolai Shmelev died. The scientist-economist who was the first to speak out for reforms and the first to oppose the way they were carried out, recalls co-author, colleague and friend of Nikolai Shmelev, professor at RANEPA, honorary professor at NES Vladimir Popov

Many will write about Nikolai Petrovich. He was a man of great caliber both in literature and in economics, and left his mark on the fate of many people. Including in my destiny. He was my boss, senior friend and co-author in 1983-1991, when I worked at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences. After 1991, we communicated regularly both at work and as friends. In 1989, our book “At the Turning Point” was published in Russia, and then in the USA; in 1991, another book was published under our editorship; before and after that, we wrote reports, articles, chapters in books together.

In 1983, I completed the manuscript for a book about economic cycles. It was criticized as undermining Marxist dogma, although it seemed to me that, on the contrary, I was restoring creative Marxism. Nikolai Petrovich responded to the book with sympathy, began to help, and as a result I moved to the sector of world economic relations at the Institute of the USA and Canada, which Shmelev then headed. During the first serious conversation, I considered it necessary to tell Shmelev, who had a reputation as a liberal, about my political views:

– I am a Social Democrat, Nikolai Petrovich, I believe in the international brotherhood of all working people. I criticize the current Soviet system, like everyone else, but I share socialist ideas. Maybe not quite a Bolshevik, but at least a “Menshevik-internationalist.”

Shmelev smiled.

- Hm, how old are you?

- Soon 30.

– Do you know what Churchill said? Anyone who was not a leftist in his youth has no heart. But whoever has not become right in old age has no mind. You still have time, but not much...

Probably, in the following years I got better, and maybe Shmelev got better, one way or another we worked together. I was lucky that fate brought us together, I realized it right away. Nikolai Petrovich differed from the others in such a way that only a blind person could fail to notice that in terms of breadth of outlook, general culture and ability to analyze and see more deeply, he was an order of magnitude superior to others.

This was obvious in science and economics: many specialists who thoroughly knew “their” topics, which they had been studying for decades, could not, as they say, take the bull by the horns - formulate the essence of the matter as clearly as Nikolai Petrovich. And they could not have made more accurate predictions.

This was obvious in his fiction - he wrote about Goethe and Pirosmani, about Pieter Bruegel and Ivan the Terrible, about the Moscow intelligentsia and Soviet life. His stories, novels and short stories were “real”, written “not in make-believe”, they were all remembered and “didn’t let go” - they forced you to mentally return to them again and again, to look for answers to eternal and enduring questions that worried people hundreds of years ago, and will always worry.

Nikolai Petrovich was one of the very first to speak out for reforms in the article “Advances and Debts,” published in Novy Mir in 1987, and one of the first to speak out against the way they were being carried out. With all his respect for Gorbachev (“a European with a Stavropol accent”), he sharply criticized his macroeconomic policies, which created huge forced savings - deferred consumer demand and widespread deficits.

In the early 90s, Shmelev was offered to join the government (the post of minister of privatization or another), but he refused. He liked to say “I’m not a governor, I’m a “Jew under the governor,” but he refused, of course, because of his fundamental disagreement with the “ruthless” shock therapy methods. He worried about the fate of the USSR, and about the fate of Russia, and about the fate of the socialist idea.

In his economic journalism of the late 1980s, Shmelev identified the main economic problem of the then development: market reforms and reliance on economic incentives require a stable ruble, and the budget deficit and its monetization undermine this very stability, discrediting reforms and reformers.

At the same time, he proposed reasonable policy options - abandoning the anti-alcohol campaign to restore budget revenues lost from excise taxes on vodka, selling real assets (small privatization) and financial assets (bond issues) to the population to pump out pent-up consumer demand, importing consumer goods using foreign exchange reserves and foreign loans to immediately fill the consumer market. Such recommendations could help finance the costs of transition to the market, carry out a kind of “surgery under anesthesia,” but, unfortunately, if they were used, it was too little and too late. The accumulated forced savings of the population were eventually liquidated in the most cruel and destructive way. There was the Pavlovian monetary reform of 1991 and the April “regulated” price increase, and then the complete freeing of prices on January 2, 1992, which marked the beginning of a period of ultra-high inflation.

During the period of high inflation of 1992-1995, when money was distributed for everything except what was really needed, Shmelev was indignant at the ruthlessness of the reformers towards pensioners, doctors, teachers, universities, and fundamental science. “If they print money in trainloads, then isn’t it possible to attach another small cart to this train to save the Academy of Sciences from collapse? Keeping the staff of the Steklov Mathematical Institute in science and in Russia costs a maximum of several million dollars - pennies on a state scale; Even if we increase the budget deficit by this amount and pay it off by printing money, inflation will only rise from 1000% per year to 1002%. Who cares. Who will notice this?

Probably better than anyone, Shmelev understood how the Soviet economy and the entire administrative system worked in reality. “To say that the system is absurd will not take us far,” he explained. “The task is to reveal the functioning mechanism of the system, the laws of its development.”

“What is the deepest secret of the Soviet system? “I didn’t understand it right away,” Shmelev said, “it took me years to understand.” I thought there was a basement in Lubyanka, there was a cage, and in a cage there were three wise men. When things get hot, serious problems arise, members of the Politburo go to the basement to the cell for advice. The wise men tell them: “send troops into Czechoslovakia” or “build Atommash” or “raise prices for meat and dairy products.” So, the most important secret of the Soviet system is that not only are there no wise men, but there are no cages or even a basement in the Lubyanka.”

Every joke has a grain of humor: Voinovich also had this image of the system in “Moscow 2042” - a supercomputer that supposedly calculated the optimal trajectory of development, but in fact was broken and not working for a long time, in a basement guarded like a sanctuary. But there is some truth in the joke. The Soviet system, contrary to the ideas of planners, did not develop according to plan at all, but according to laws unknown to anyone, and it developed relatively steadily and at one time (until the mid-60s) even reduced the gap with Western countries in terms of per capita income, and even in social indicators (duration life, for example) was ahead of many. We still don’t know what these laws and mechanisms for the development of the planned system are (this is one of the largest gaps in economic science), but thanks to Shmelev we have a lot of “tips”.

As a matter of fact, in this area, Shmelev’s artistic works, especially his collection of short stories “ CurriculumVitae", provide no less food for thought than his scientific works. Re-read the stories about A.I. Sobolev, who saved the Secretary of the Central Committee for International Relations B.N. Ponomarev from an angry bull, about Idi Amin and his friend - a reluctant Soviet intelligence agent, about N.P. Firyubin, secretary of the Moscow city party committee after the war, whom Stalin suspected of wanting to “turn off the sewerage system and cut the wires in the Kremlin.” These are valuable documents of the era, real stories written down by a real writer who knew how to see and grasp the main thing. For serious future students of Soviet socialism, these stories will provide no less than archives and statistical reports.

From Shmelev I first heard that the creation of economic councils in 1957, which many believed did not make any economic sense, was in fact dictated by considerations of political struggle. Khrushchev then tried to overcome the resistance of the ministerial bureaucracy and decided to create “two parties” - in agriculture and industry (and in the future he wanted to create six - in poultry farming, pig farming, etc.). So it turned out that the economic councils were partly akin to the Chinese “cultural revolution,” the goal of which was also to prevent the bureaucratization of the apparatus.

From Shmelev, I learned for the first time what broad powers and economic independence unprecedented in the planned system were granted to the people's commissars of weapons, tanks, aircraft, and ammunition during the Second World War - right down to the right to set salaries that they considered necessary. It turned out that at critical moments the administrative system could not give a damn about all the taboos and use purely market methods.

He did not have time to write down much of what Nikolai Petrovich said. Those who knew him, probably like me, are only now realizing that many of his unpublished thoughts will be difficult to reconstruct and think through to the end.

In the story “The Last Floor,” which Nikolai Petrovich himself considered “the most important thing written,” the main character says this:

“...no one has ever managed to think of these eternal questions to do more than a simple statement of a sad, I agree, unpleasant and, nevertheless, absolutely indisputable fact: each of us is just a grain of sand in the desert of existence, and have you come to the world or was not in it at all, has absolutely no meaning for anyone, except perhaps you yourself and a few of your loved ones whom fate, one way or another, tied with you in one knot.”

I argued, I said that there is some meaning, a purpose, that humanity will eventually achieve the fact that people will live forever, and we will find out what is there, beyond the boundaries of the Universe. I quoted Confucius: “live as if you would die tomorrow; study as if you will live forever.” “Yes, I can accept the inevitability of death,” answered Nikolai Petrovich. “But I will never be able to come to terms with the fact that we will never know what the meaning is, why we were given this life.”

What can I say, it’s really hard to come to terms with. It is even more difficult to die without knowing what this meaning is. But just because we don’t know doesn’t mean there’s no point. For me, this meaning is determined by the achievements and moral guidelines of people like Shmelev. Nikolai Petrovich did not opportunistically either in Soviet or post-Soviet times. His fiction was not published for a quarter of a century, but he still continued to write “on the table”, not adjusting to either censorship or “political correctness.” He managed to do a lot and lived his life with dignity according to the highest Hamburg account.

In the last years of his life, Shmelev half-jokingly complained about the burden of the past years: “It’s already difficult for me to delve into the meaning of discussions, when I sit at the Academic Council or at a conference, it’s difficult for me to concentrate, I have to make an effort to understand what they are talking about and what new ideas are being proclaimed. But, in the end, I make an effort and get to the bottom of it - God, what are they talking about, I knew all this 30 years ago!”