Alexander Chayanov

Alexander Chayanov studied at Russian State Agricultural University. Training under A. Fortunatov is recorded. Yevgeny Engel is recorded as having studied under Alexander Chayanov. The recorded working language is Russian. The field of work recorded is economics, rural sociology and Peasant economics. Places of work recorded in the authority are Moscow. Employment is recorded with Russian State Agricultural University.

• Born — 17 January 1888 • Birthplace — Moscow, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire • Died — 3 October 1937 17 January 1888 • Place of death — Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union • Field — economics

Chayanov was born in Moscow, the son of a merchant, Vasily Ivanovich Chayanov, and an agronomist, Elena Konstantinovna (born Klepikova). He attended a Realschule (1899–1906) and the Moscow Agricultural Institute (1906–1911), becoming an agronomist; he taught and published works on agriculture until 1914, when he began working for various government institutions. In 1912 he married Elena Vasilevna Grigorieva, a marriage that lasted until 1920. In 1921 he married Olga Emmanuilovna Gurevich; they had sons Nikita (born 1922) and Vasily (born 1925).

After the October Revolution, he served on several Soviet committees for agrarian reform and was a member of Narkomzem as well as "holding lecturing and administrative posts at several universities and academies." He was a proponent of agricultural cooperatives, but was skeptical about the inefficiency of large-scale farms. Chayanov's skepticism was rooted in the idea that households, especially peasant households which practice subsistence farming, will tend to produce only the amount of food that they need to survive. He believed that the Soviet government would find it difficult to force these households to cooperate and produce a surplus. These views were sharply criticized by Joseph Stalin as "defence of the kulaks".

In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the Case of the Labour Peasant Party (Трудовая крестьянская партия), fabricated by the NKVD. The process was intended to be a show trial, but Stalin decided that the case did not look sufficiently convincing and ordered a conviction in a secret trial («в закрытом порядке», "in a closed manner"). In 1932 Chayanov was sentenced to five years in the Kazakhstan labor camps. In 1937, Chayanov was arrested again and was shot after his name appeared on an execution list signed by Stalin and Molotov.

His wife Olga was repressed as well and spent 18 years in labour camps; she was released in 1955 and died in 1983. Chayanov was rehabilitated in 1987.

The higher the ratio of dependents to workers in a household, the harder the workers have to work. Chayanov proposed that peasants would work as hard as they needed in order to meet their subsistence needs, but had no incentive beyond those needs and therefore would slow and stop working once they were met. The principle, which is called the consumption-labour-balance principle, is therefore that labour will increase until it meets (balances) the needs (consumption) of the household. This view of peasant farming implies that it will not develop into capitalism without some external, added factor. Furthermore, the peasant's way of life is seen as ideologically opposed to capitalism in that the family work for a living, not for a profit. Evidence for this principle is found in the actions of Turkish peasants after the collapse of cereal prices in 1929.