Dmitry Lvov
Russian economist and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences who argued Russia's natural-resource rents, not just its industry, should be captured as public revenue rather than privatized — a rent-based alternative to 1990s shock-therapy reform.
Overview
Dmitry Semyonovich Lvov (1930–2007) was a Russian economist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (elected 1994), and academic secretary of its Economics Department from 1996 to 2002; he spent most of his career at the Central Economic-Mathematical Institute (CEMI) of the Academy, working on investment efficiency and, from the 1990s, the economics of Russia's post-Soviet transition.[1] Rather than accepting that privatization of state assets required privatizing natural-resource wealth along with industry, Lvov argued Russia's oil, gas, and mineral rents should be placed on the public balance sheet and collected as state revenue instead of flowing to a small number of new private owners.[2]
According to Fred Harrison — writing in the 2022 "Corrupting the Body Politic" postscript added to The Corruption of Economics — Lvov worked with Harrison's circle during the 1990s on proposals for a rent-financed Russian state without an oligarch class, and was politically sidelined; Harrison names the IMF as the institution most determined to frustrate the effort, as Russia instead pursued the "shock therapy" privatization that produced the 1990s oligarchs.[3] In a 2001 address, reproduced by a Georgist advocacy circle, Lvov located Russia's core problem as "the undecided problem of ownership of the natural-resource potential of our planet," arguing resource assets that were "not made by human hands" should be publicly owned rather than privately captured, and calling on the state to "put it on the public balance sheet."[2]
See Also
- The Corruption of Economics (book) — Harrison's postscript account of Lvov's sidelining and the IMF's opposition
- The Corruption of Economics (narrative) — the wiki's broader narrative of neoclassical and institutional resistance to rent-based reform
- Resource Rents — the general concept of natural-resource rent Lvov argued Russia should capture publicly
- Sovereign Wealth Fund — the institutional form other resource-rich states have used for the public-balance-sheet approach Lvov proposed
Sources
- Bolshaya Rossiyskaya Entsiklopediya (Great Russian Encyclopedia), "Львов Дмитрий Семёнович" — bigenc.ru/c/l-vov-dmitrii-semionovich-0c8a2f — used for birth/death dates and places, CEMI career, and Academy of Sciences positions (basic-facts source; Russian-language).
- Christian Council for Monetary Justice, reproducing a Fred Harrison tweet and an excerpt of Dmitry Lvov's 2001 address to the Russian State Duma — ccmj.org/wp/archives/7315 — used for the quoted material and Lvov's argument for public ownership of resource rents. The original Duma-lecture text this excerpt draws from (hosted at larouchepub.com) could not be independently verified this session; direct primary-source verification of the full 2001 lecture is still outstanding.
- Mason Gaffney, Fred Harrison & Kris Feder, The Corruption of Economics (Shepheard-Walwyn, 1994; 2022 revised edition), "Corrupting the Body Politic" postscript — discovery source; used for Harrison's account of Lvov's role and the IMF's opposition. A direct page cite is not yet supplied; this draws on the wiki's existing book-summary page rather than a fresh chapter-level read.