Dmitri Bogolepov
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Dmitry Bogolepov | |
|---|---|
Дмитрий Петрович Боголепов | |
| Chairman of the Provisional Presidium of Moscow University | |
| In office 1920–1921 | |
| Preceded by | (university councils and elected rectors abolished) |
| Succeeded by | Vyacheslav Volgin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 30 June (12 July) 1885 Moscow, Russian Empire |
| Died | 8 May 1941 Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Political party | RSDLP(b) / CPSU |
| Education | Moscow University (1909) |
| Occupation | Jurist, economist, politician |
Dmitry Petrovich Bogolepov (Дмитрий Петрович Боголепов; 30 June [O.S. 12 July] 1885 – 8 May 1941) was a Russian and Soviet jurist, economist and Bolshevik politician who headed Moscow University as chairman of its Provisional Presidium from 1920 to 1921, and who played an early role in shaping Soviet financial policy.[1]
Early life and education
Bogolepov was born on 30 June (12 July) 1885 in Moscow, the son of Pyotr Andreyevich Bogolepov, a hereditary honorary citizen, teacher and school inspector in Tver Governorate and himself the son of a village priest.[2] After graduating with a gold medal from the 7th Moscow Gymnasium in 1904, he briefly attended the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute before transferring to the law faculty of Moscow University, from which he graduated with a first-class diploma in 1909; a student of Ivan Ozerov, he was retained at the university's chair of financial law to prepare for a professorship.[1][2] In 1913 he passed his master's examination in financial law and political economy and was confirmed as a privatdozent, combining his work at the law faculty with lectures on banking at the Moscow Private Law Institute.[2]
Revolutionary activity
Bogolepov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1907.[2] From 1914 to 1915 he served as an economic adviser to the Social Democratic faction of the Fourth State Duma, subsequently contributing to Social Democratic periodicals, and in 1917 he wrote for the Bolshevik newspapers Sotsial-Demokrat and Pravda.[2][1] He met Vladimir Lenin personally at the April 1917 party conference, where his additions to a report on the country's economic situation drew Lenin's attention and led to his invitation to join the commission that drafted theses later adopted as the Bolshevik programme for seizing power.[1] He also took part in the Sixth Party Congress in the summer of 1917, joining the commission that drafted its resolutions, and in early October 1917 a meeting of Moscow Bolshevik leaders on the planned armed uprising was held at his apartment.[1]
Career in Soviet finance
On 17 (30) November 1917, Bogolepov was appointed assistant to the People's Commissar of Finance and director of the Department of the State Treasury.[1][2] He argued for a properly constructed 1918 budget and took early steps toward this by requesting expenditure estimates from all central government departments, though these measures were not adopted, and by early 1919 he had begun to move away from the finance commissariat.[1] In his 1917 monograph War and Finance, he argued that revolution had become inevitable given the irreconcilable contradictions between the needs of the economy and the interests of the propertied classes, and proposed a financial programme for a future Bolshevik government based on halting currency emission, devaluing the rouble, returning eventually to a gold-backed currency, and sharply increasing direct taxation — particularly income and property taxes — on the propertied classes rather than relying on foreign loans.[1] In 1918 he was associated with the Left Communists, and he took part in the Constitutional Commission that drafted Soviet Russia's first constitution in July 1918.[1][2] He organised and became the first rector of the Moscow Financial-Economic Institute of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Finance in 1919, an institution today known as the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.[1] In 1919–1920 he was sent first to the Ukrainian finance commissariat and then to the Turkestan Republic to help organise its banking and financial structures.[1][2]
Head of Moscow University
As part of a wider Soviet effort to bring higher education under state control, Bogolepov served on the "Rothstein Commission," established under Narkompros in 1920 to fundamentally revise the teaching of social sciences in Russian higher schools.[1] Narkompros's plan for university governance replaced the traditional university councils and elected rectors with new collegial bodies, termed Provisional Presidiums, responsible for both academic and administrative affairs; Bogolepov was appointed chairman of Moscow University's Provisional Presidium in 1920, in effect becoming its rector.[1][2]
Bogolepov based his actions on directives from Lenin, whom he met with personally to discuss financial and university matters; he later recalled Lenin's instructions to him, given at a meeting in late 1920, as consisting of three points — that science was to serve only workers (or, as Lenin corrected him, only the poor), that "freedom of teaching" was to be abolished in favour of teaching conducted according to the party's instructions, and that the material conditions of Moscow University's staff were to be improved.[1] Finding the Provisional Presidium too unwieldy a body to enact these changes, he formed a smaller "Little Presidium" to concentrate authority, and used an academic commission headed by professor Arkady Timiryazev — son of the naturalist Kliment Timiryazev — in his disputes with faculty assemblies, while an administrative-economic commission was headed by professor K. P. Yakovlev.[2]
During his brief tenure, the university's first party school opened in the autumn of 1920, beginning an organised system of party political education, and a commission was formed to improve the living conditions of scientists and teaching staff, alongside new regulations for rewarding scholars.[1][2] In early 1921, following a Council of People's Commissars decree on organising social-science faculties, the university's Faculty of Social Sciences was expanded to seven departments — social-pedagogical, legal, economic, foreign relations, statistical, literary-artistic, and ethno-linguistic — and the university assisted in organising a new university in Turkestan.[2] A decree of 10 March 1921 also established a Floating Marine Institute for the study of northern seas, in which Moscow University zoologists took an active part.[2]
Bogolepov's administrative methods provoked strong resistance from the university's established professoriate and earned him a reputation, in the words of one contemporary, as a destroyer of scholarship, which soon led to his removal from the post.[1] He was replaced in 1921 by Vyacheslav Volgin, whom the astronomer Vsevolod Stratonov recalled in his memoirs as possessing a tact that eased tensions between the appointed rector and the university's still partly autonomous faculties.[1]
Later career
Bogolepov continued to work as a professor at Moscow University until 1931, when he moved to the Institute of Soviet Law, where he remained until 1933.[1] He subsequently combined research at the Institute of Nationalities under the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union and at the Scientific Research Financial Institute under the People's Commissariat of Finance with teaching at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, and served as a member of the expert Higher Attestation Commission.[1][2] His works included Money of Soviet Russia (1924) and the textbook A Short Course in Financial Science (1925).[1]
Death
Bogolepov died in Moscow on 8 May 1941.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 "ЭС: Д.П.Боголепов" (in русский). Moscow University Chronicle (letopis.msu.ru). Retrieved 10 September 2026.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 "Дмитрий Петрович Боголепов. Экономист, ректор МГУ" (in русский). Novodevichye.com. Retrieved 10 September 2026.
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