soviet mathematical economists during the brezhnev era: disciplinary status and epistemic culture...

Soviet Mathematical Economists during the Brezhnev Era: Disciplinary Status

and Epistemic Culture

Ivan Boldyrev, Humboldt University (Berlin) and National Research University – Higher School of

Economics (Moscow)iboldyrev@hse.ru

Olessia Kirtchik, National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow)

okirchik@hse.ru

Motivation• Part of the larger project – Research Group Social

studies of economic knowledge (http://igiti.hse.ru/socres/)

• The first object of inquiry – general equilibrium theory in a comparative perspective

• Subfield of mathematical economics – more comprehensive term covering heterogeneous research domains and practices

• Ambiguous status: between technicalities of applied math and ideologically dubious refuge of neoclassicism

Questions• Tentative socio-historical analysis• Institutionalization• Epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina 1991)• Disciplinary identity (Lamont&

Molnar 2002)• Comparison East-West

Institutions

• Strong tension within a discipline (US: institutionalists and Chicago school, USSR: Marxist political economy)

• Delay in institutionalization in the USSR (CEMI founded in 1963; mathematical methods to develop after 1953)

• Unlike US, math econ remained a minor group, with few institutional sites and only limited influence in universities

• Like US, math econ was a part of larger planning and cybernetics movement inspired by a Cold war context

Knowledge and Epistemic Culture

• Very few developments in economic theorizing, why?

• Conjecture: polarization and lack of identity• Math econ reduced to applied math; political

economy stayed away from the data; applied economists did not dare theoretical generalizations

• Dorfman 1976: technocratic modeling, emphasis on the supply side; balance, optimization.

Anti-Semitism as an important ‘omitted variable’

• Weintraub 2012: academic Anti-Semitism in the US universities explaining the rise of MIT

• Soviet case: Anti-Semitism at the math department of Moscow University, special unsolvable problems etc. (Frenkel 2012)

• A lot of mathematicians coming into math econ, with a lot of new jobs

• The story of one ‘Polterovich’ and two ‘Ivanovs’

Conclusion: parallels and contrasts

• Both cases reveal internal tensions within economics profession, state funding (role of the military), anti-Semitism

• However: Soviet math econ developed with a delay for ideological reasons (no theoretical backwardness! Cf. the story of Kantorovich)

• Soviet math econ lacked autonomous economic (theoretical) discourse beyond Marxist political economy and applied math/operations research

Thank you!