Den, Vladimir Eduardovich

Born Dec. 15 (27), 1867, in St. Petersburg; died December 1933 in Leningrad. Soviet economic geographer and statistician.

Den, a professor, was head of the subdepartment of economic geography at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (1902-31) and other institutions of higher learning. His principal works are on the geography of sectors of the economy and on the theory of economic geography. He headed the directorate for sector statistics, where description, based on abundant statistical materials, prevailed; the appropriate socioeconomic analysis was absent. He subsequently admitted the necessity of combining the sector and regional directorates. In the 1930’s the school of geography associated with Den went into a decline; his students adopted Marxist-Leninist positions of economic geography. His principal works are On Forms of Enterprise (1907), The Coal and Ironworks Industry (1907), Essays on Economic Geography (part 1, 1908), The Course of Economic Geography (1924), and The Position of Russia in the World Economy (1922).