Task 5. Compose a summary of the text in 80 words

IVAN VERNADSKYY

(1821–1884)

Ivan Vernadskyy can be considered as a representative of the classical school of economics in Ukraine. He was the first of the three famous scholars to bear that surname. He was the father of Volodymyr (1863–1945), a world-known geochemist and the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Volodymyr’s son, George (1887–1973), was a well-known specialist of Russian history at Yale University.

Ivan Vernadskyy was born on May 24, 1821 into the family of a physician in Kyiv (his mother was from the Korolenko line of Ukrainian Cossack nobility). At Kyiv University he studied philosophy and Slavic philology. After graduating with honours, he was offered a stipend to pursue political economy, which he acceptedand travelled to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and England. He defended his Master’s thesis at St. Petersburg University in 1847. After a two-year stint teaching in Kyiv, he entered Moscow University and in 1849 completed a Doctoral dissertation on Italian economic theory. Two years later he secured a full professorship and taught political economy.

In 1857 he was called to St. Petersburg to serve as an advisor to the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs. That year he also published and edited the newspaper “Economic Index” and in 1859, the journal Economist. His contributions were marked by a commitment to a laissez-faire approach to economics and liberalism in social issues. For a time, the “EI” was published at the printing house owned by P. Kulish. Through P. Kulish, he met T. Shevchenko and Kvitka Osnovyanenko, as well as the historian M. Maksymovych.

I. Vernadskyy’s publications served as the epicentre of the establishment’s ruminations over the abolition of serfdom (which came in 1861). He believed that the newly emancipated serfs should be afforded total economic and social freedom and a loosening of the fetters of “obshchini” (collective communities).

I. Vernadskyy also argued for the economic emancipation of women: he supported allowing them into the labour force and championed their rights to equal pay. I. Vernadskyy’s periodicals took strong stands against anti-Semitism and the havoc caused in the environment by the rapid pace of industrialisation and urbanisation.

In 1868 he was forced to leave St. Petersburg because of a heart condition and chose to travel to Kharkiv, where he became director of the State Bank’s local branch. Upon his retirement in 1876 he returned to St. Petersburg, where he died on March 27, 1884.

To sum up, I. Vernadskyy was a persistent and staunch admirer of the laisser-faire economic doctrine and liberalism in politics, and presented his views cogently and eloquently. Being a true child of the nineteenth century, I. Vernadskyy had faith in the perfectibility of human conditions. He concluded that this improvement would not come soon, but it can be said with certainty that the key toward the solution has been found [by economics] in terms of methodology and analysis of the basic laws of production.

Task 6. Read the text “Hryhoriy Tsekhanovetskyy” and translate it.

Task 7. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. What was H. Tsekhanovetskyy?

2. Where did he get his education?

3. What was H. Tsekhanovetskyy’s contribution to the study of the history of economic thought in Ukraine?

4. What did H. Tsekhanovetskyy analyze in the monograph on Adam Smith?

5. Was H. Tsekhanovetskyy in favour of the ideas by A. Smith?

6. Which of them did he attack? Why?

7. What was H. Tsekhanovetskyy’s approach to the study of economics?

8. How did he argue his point of view?