The Academic Career and Achievements of Aleksandr Buzgalin

Abstract

Post-Soviet Russia in the past two decades has seen the establishing of a network of Marxist intellectuals working in the areas of philosophy, sociology and political economy. The main center around which this school has crystallized has been the journal published regularly by this community for more than 20 years. Through the work of the school more than 50 collective and individual monographs have appeared (including 37 in the Library of the Journal series), along with many hundreds of articles, appearing in virtually all leading academic periodicals and in many well-known journals of public commentary. More than a hundred international scholarly congresses, forums, conferences and seminars have been held in numerous cities of Russia, with active international collaboration. The results have included the forming, in Russia and in the broader post-Soviet space, of the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism.The journal International Critical Thought (Buzgalin and Kolganov 2011) has in the past outlined the main characteristics and socio-philosophical aspects of this school, and as a result the focus here will be on the main political and economic contributions made by one of its most eminent figures: Aleksandr Buzgalin, the chief editor of the journal and arguably the best-known Marxist in present-day Russia.Aleksandr Buzgalin was born in 1954, and spent his childhood in remote regions of Russia. In 1971 he entered the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, graduating with distinction in 1976. In 1979 he defended his candidate's dissertation, devoted to a highly contentious topic of that period, the contradictions of the planned organization of social production. He then took up a post at Moscow State University, where he continues to work. In 1989 he defended his doctoral dissertation, and since 1992 he has held the rank of professor.At present, Aleksandr Buzgalin is a Distinguished Professor of the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, and also director of the Institute of Socioeconomics of the Moscow Financial and Juridical University. He teaches courses on political economy, the methodology of socio-economic research, the Russian economy and a range of other topics. In addition, he conducts analytical and consultative activity in dialogue with the First Deputy Chairperson of the Committee on of the State Duma (parliament) of the Russian Federation and other deputies.Aleksandr Buzgalin is an active public figure. At the final, Twenty-Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990 he and two of his friends were elected to the party's Central Committee. Following the dissolution of the USSR and the banning of the Communist Party Aleksandr Buzgalin did not abandon social and political activity, but helped found the association Scholars for Democracy and Socialism and later, the Alternatives movement, in which he has been a leading figure for more than 20 years. In recent years he has also been first deputy chairperson of the public association Education for All, one of the initiators and organizers of the Russian Social Forums, and a prominent participant in many other federal and regional initiatives of a socialist character. In 2011 Professor Buzgalin helped establish the Political Economy Association of the Post-Soviet Space, and he is now one of its coordinators. In the spring of 2013 he was a key participant in organizing the First Moscow Economic Forum, held at Moscow State University and involving more than 1,500 scholars, experts, politicians and business entrepreneurs from all continents. At the forum, constructive alternatives to market fundamentalism were put forward in the fields of economic policy and theory (Moscow Economic Forum 2013).One of Professor Buzgalin's main areas of activity has been the journal of which he has been chief editor since 1994. The journal, together with international conferences organized by its editorial group and the books that have appeared as part of the Library of the Journal Alternatives, has in practice provided the main setting for dialogue between post-Soviet adherents of creative Marxism. …