Viktor Prugavin
Prugavin, Viktor Stepanovich
Born 1858; died 1896, in Moscow. Russian economist. Zemstvo (district and provincial assembly) statistician. Liberal Narodnik (Populist).
Prugavin graduated from the Petrovskoe Academy of Agriculture and Forestry in 1880. He became known for his studies of cottage industries and the rural peasant commune. Prugavin believed that the development of craft artels, which were supposedly established on a basis of “community and solidarity of interests,” was a means of protecting peasant crafts from capitalism. His theory that Russia could develop without capitalism was Utopian.
Prugavin’s Populist views were criticized by V. I. Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Poln. sobr. soch, 5th ed., vol. 3, pp. 294–95, 374–75).
WORKS
Ocherki kustarnoi promyshlennosti Rossii po poslednim issledovaniiam chastnykh lits, zemstv i komissii. Moscow, 1882.Sel’skaia obshchina, kustarnye promysly i zemledel’cheskoe khoziaistvo Iur’evskogo uezda Vladimirskoi gubernii. Moscow, 1884.
Russkaia pozemel’naia obshchina v trudakh ee mestnykh issledovatelei. Moscow, 1888.