User:BlindArthur/Yevgeni Preobrazhensky

Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky (Russian: Евгений Алексеевич Преображенский) (February 27 1886 - July 13, 1937) was an Old Bolshevik, a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1917, a leader of the Bolshevik party in the Urals at the time of the October Revolution, holder of several national party and state offices afterwards, and the leading economist of the Left Opposition in the 1920s. He was first expelled from the party in 1927 at the height of the struggle with the United Opposition. He rejoined the party in July of 1929, but was subsequently expelled in 1931 and again in 1935. Arrested at the end of 1936, he was tried for treason and executed in 1937.

Early Life and Political Activism
Preobrazhensky was born in Bolkhov, a town in the Oryol Oblast of Russia. He attended the Bolkhov Parochial School where his father Alekseii Aleksandrovich Preobrazhenskii, an Orthodox priest, was a Bible teacher; then completed 2 years at the Bolkhov City School before attending the Oryol Gymnaisum.

At the age of 14 he became a convinced atheist. While at the Oryol Gymnasium he read, reproduced and distributed illegal literature from both the Social Democratic and Socialist Revolutionary parties, and organized student circles. Late in 1903 Preobrazhensky joined the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, carrying out underground Party work in Orel, Bryansk and Moscow. He attended Moscow University but was arrested during his first year there. He took part in the 1905 uprising in the Presnensky District of Moscow. . After escaping the assault on the Presnensky District by the Semyonovsky Regiment, he was sent in 1906 to work in the Urals, working in Perm and Zlatoust. He was first imprisoned in March of 1906, but after 5 months (and a four-day hunger strike) he was released for lack of evidence. He later worked in Ekaterinburg, Cheliabinsk, and Ufa. In 1906 while traveling to Petrograd to purchase Brownings to arm detachments of workers (Russian: "боевой дружины" - combat squads) he was again denounced to the police, arrested at the Kazan station and returned to Perm. He served eight months in the penal battalions before being released for lack of evidence. Upon release he went to the Southern Urals, working mainly in Ufa and Zlatoust reforming the Urals regional organization and printing the Uralsky Rabochy and other papers on a clandestine press. He represented the Urals at the Second All-Russian Party Conference in Finland in August 1907, where he first met Lenin.

At the end of April 1909 he was arrested on the streets of Ufa. Convicted that May in Cheliabinsk and then in September in Perm he was sentenced to internal exile in Karapchanka, Kirensk district, Irkutsk guberniia. He escaped from exile in the winter of 1911 and went to Novonikolaevsk where he contributed to the legal Marxist paper Obskaya Zhizn. He was re-arrested late in 1912, the day before departing Russia for a conference at Krupskaya's invitation. He was jailed for six months for his escape, and then returned to internal exile. In 1915 he was allowed to move to Irkutsk where he joined the local party organization. After the group collapsed and a more 'reliable' group was formed, he wrote an anti-war proclamation but before it could be published the group was dissolved on suspicion that one of its member was an agent provocateur.

At one of his trials his lawyer, Alexander Kerensky, declared that Preobrazhensky was not involved in any revolutionary movement. Preobrazhensky "disavowed his counsel and proclaimed his revolutionary conviction."

While in Irkutsk Preobrazhenskii married Roza Abramovna Nevel'son (1898- 1980). In the spring of 1916 he moved to Chita and was still there when the February Revolution began.

The Revolution of 1917
Preobrazhensky was elected a delegate to the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies (3-24 June). He left Chita for Petrograd in April. After the Congress he returned to the Urals and was elected to the Urals Oblast Party Committee. He returned to Petrograd for the Sixth Party Congress in August of 1917 as a representative of the Zlatoust party organization, and was elected to the party's Central Committee (as a candidate member) and to the Mandate Commission. At this Congress Preobrazhensky questioned the party's strategy of building an alliance between the proletariat and the poorer peasantry, specifically asking "(1) for a concrete definition of the category of the 'poorest peasant' to whom Bolsheviks were to appeal, and (2) for a description of the form that organizational cooperation between peasant and proletarian was to take."

In the discussion at the Congress on Bukharin's resolution on the current situation and the war, Preobrazhensky proposed an amendment "advocating the uncompromising prosecution of revolutionary war" which was defeated. He also proposed alternative wording for the resolution "On the Political Situation" that "suggested that the socialist nature of the Russian revolution should be preconditioned in the resolution by a proletarian revolution in the west"; Stalin disagreed, arguing that "It is not impossible that Russia will be the country that would open the way to socialism." Preobrazhensky's amendment was rejected.

He returned to the Urals and was active in Zlatoust and Zima during the October revolution. During an armed demonstration under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" he lost his voice, he said, because he "urged the workers so vehemently".

Under his leadership the membership of the Bolshevik party in the Urals "between the late summer of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 ... appear[s] to have increased twofold". However the Urals Regional Committee was later (in January 1918) said to have "omitted to make preparations for the seizure of governmental power in October...". .

Also in 1917, Preobrazhensky and his wife Roza had their first child, Leonid.

Agrarian Policy
In keeping with his criticisms of the party's agrarian policy at the Sixth Congress, in an article in Pravda on 31 December 1917 Preobrazhensky criticized the policy of "land socialization" - distributing the large estates amongst the poorer peasantry: "If implemented, in the short term all that it would achieve would be to destroy the only reliable allies of the urban proletariat in the countryside, the batraki. The grant of land to these rural labourers would transform them into petty proprietors, opposed to further advances to socialism. The middle peasants too would gain land and would tenaciously defend their enlarged plot. In sum, the swelling in the ranks of the peasantry would so strengthen the forces of counter-revolution as to pose immense obstacles to the introduction of collective socialist agriculture in the future." He continued his criticisms in an article in Izvestiia of 26 January 1918, arguing that division of the large estates was "fundamentally reactionary from the economic point of view and deeply unjust to the agricultural proletariat." He predicted a fall in agricultural production as a consequence of land division which would threaten urban Russia even further with starvation.

Revolutionary War
Meanwhile the short-term survival of the proletarian regime was cast in doubt when the Decree on Peace was rejected by the Allied Powers, and Russia was faced with the choice of fighting the Central Powers or agreeing to a separate peace with them. Initially Lenin's government chose to drag out the peace negotiations, but this tactic encountered opposition within the party; for example the Moscow Regional Bureau of the RSDLP(b) resolved on 10 January 1918 that it was necessary to "halt the peace negotiations with imperialist Germany" and "form a volunteer revolutionary army immediately".

On 16 January 1918 Preobrazhensky published an article in Pravda arguing that revolutionary war was a fundamental tenet of Bolshevism, and that regardless of whether she signed the peace, Russia would soon be faced by a united imperialist front. .

At a meeting of 63 delegates from Petrograd, Moscow, the Urals, the Ukraine and the Volga in Petrograd on 21 January 1918 prior to the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets Preobrazhensky and Ossinski secured the support of a majority (32) of the delegates for their call for revolutionary war. This was the high point of support for this policy in the party's top ranks; three days later the Central Committee rejected the policy by 11 to 2; favoring instead Trotsky's formula of dragging out the peace negotiations by a vote of 12 to 1. Preobrazhensky, at the time a candidate member of the CC, did not attend this meeting.

On 28 January 1918 Preobrazhensky joined other leading party members in a statement noting the "contradiction between decisions of authoritative Party bodies" on the question of a "'shameful peace'", giving rise to "the possibility that decisions made by the centre of the Party will be violated and a lack of clarity in the Party's political line...". They called for an immediate party conference "(within a week) to resolve and finally clarify this question of historic importance for the international proletariat" and threatening to resign if a peace was signed without such a conference being called. At this same time a "group of Urals Party workers," including Preobrazhensky, called for an immediate Party conference as well.

There was still significant support for the policy of revolutionary war within the party: a survey of the views of local soviets in February revealed that "a small majority of the city soviets voted for war, while a small majority of the village soviets voted for peace." )

Preobrazhensky argued that support for the policy would increase if the working class engaged in 'a most active and feverish preparation for the inevitable combat at hand with the German marauders.'

But by the end of February Lenin had secured a majority in the Central Committee, and then the VTsIK, in favor of signing the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which was accomplished on 3 March 1918.

Formation of Left Communists
It was at this time that the Left Communists formed around the journal Kommunist, published daily from 5 to 19 March edited by Bukharin, Radek and Uritsky, and as a monthly from 20 April to June with Ossinsky and V.M. Smirnov joining the editorial team. Preobrazhensky and several other prominent Bolsheviks such as Y. Pyatakov, Soltz, Unschlicht, Kollontai, V. Kuibishev, E. Yaroslavsky, Sapronov and Safarov contributed to the journal.

As the leader of the Ural Oblast party committee, which was dominated by the Left Communists, Preobrazhensky continued to campaign against the party's policy. Along with Nikolai Krestinskii and Georgii Safarov he directed the Left Communist movement in the Urals. .

Despite the signing of the peace treaty the Left Communists continued to criticize it, but their focus shifted to their criticisms of the party's agrarian and industrial policies. .

In this period, for example, Preobrazhensky published an article, Съезд Необходим (Congress Required), in Kommunist which ....

The Civil War
In virtue of his position as chairman of the Urals Oblast party committee, Preobrazhensky served as the head of the political department (politotdely) for the Third Army on the eastern front against against the Czech Legion and against Aleksandr Kolchak's forces during the Civil War.

Revolt of the Left S.R.s
On 6 July 1918 two Left S.R.s assassinated Count Mirbach, the German ambassador to Russia. Late that same day Prosh Proshian, the Left S.R. who was Commissar for Internal Affairs, and a group of 10 sailors occupied the Central Telegraph Office in Moscow. During the storming of the office to retake it the next day Preobrazhensky, who was in Moscow for the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, was "slightly injured in the left temple".

Execution of the Tsar and his family
At the end of April 1918 the ex-Tsar Nicholas Romanov and his immediate family had been transferred into the control of the Urals Regional Soviet in Ekaterinburg. At this time Preobrazhensky was the head of the Urals Regional party committee. In July as the White army's forces approached, the Presidium of the Regional Soviet voted to execute Nicholas; his wife, their children and those held with him were also executed. While some sources claim Preobrazhensky had a role in the executions, he does not seem to have been in the Urals at the time of the execution , having left around 26 June for the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Moscow, and returning by 6 August.

Defeat at Perm
On 25 December 1918 the important city of Perm in the Urals fell to General Gajda's White Army troops, threatening the loss of the Urals. By 30 December the Urals Oblast party committee had sent the CC a report criticizing the Army Commissariat "for its lack of effective coordination and for its shoddy organization" and asserted that they had "warned the military command that their troops would go over to the enemy's side because they had had insufficient time to prepare them for battle." They criticized the use of Tsarist officers, and "demanded that the Central Committee immediately appoint an authoritative commission" to investigate the matter. . On 1 January 1919 the CC and Sovnarkom sent a commission headed by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky to investigate the causes of the defeat. Their "preliminary report" of January 13th, among other points, "featured a determined plea that well-known left-wing skeptics such as Preobrazhensky, Safarov, and Tolmachev be removed from the front line area." . While their final report's major criticisms were of the Commander in Chief Jukums Vācietis and the All-Russian Office of Military Commissars under K. Iurenev. , it also criticized the Regional Party Committee which Preobrazhensky lead, stating that "Party work is neglected, and that the local functionaries endeavour to compensate for the general weakness of the Party and Soviet institutions by intensifying the activities of the Extraordinary Commissions, which, in view of the general breakdown of Party and Soviet work, have become the sale representatives of Soviet power in the provinces." As a result the Urals Oblast party committee was dissolved and its responsibilities incorporated into the newly-formed Siberian Oblast party committee ; Preobrazhensky was called to Moscow to serve as an editor of Pravda.

Secretariat, Orgburo and CCC
Preobrazhensky and Roza's second child Irma was born in 1921.

Glavpolitprosvet
In March of 1921 Preobrazhensky was appointed chairman of Glavprofobr, Narkompros' administration of higher and technical education. He advocated a greater emphasis on technical education, believing that the development of a system of technical education would raise the workers and peasants to a common level of skill, and reduce the dependency on bourgeois specialists, both contributing to a raising of wages and improvement of working conditions. He was opposed by Lunacharsky the Commissar of Narkompros and Lenin's wife Krupskaya (a member of the Narkompros collegium), who sought "to achieve a wide-ranging proletarian class-consciousness among the mass of the population." As Krupskaia wrote, "the strengthening of proletarian culture (in its broadest sense), the spread of influence over the entire population is a necessary condition for the accomplishment of socialism. Socialism will be possible only when the psychology of people is radically changed. To change it is the task standing before us." Preobrazhensky felt that implementing the Party's programme of "general and polytechnical education for all children up to the age of 17" would have to be delayed, perhaps for two decades, until the needs of expanding industry for skilled workers had been filled.

In keeping with those priorities, Preobrazhensky "believed that universities and other institutes of higher education had to satisfy immediate economic and political demands and not their own narrow scientific and academic interests."

He was blamed for his provocative handling of the professors when they went on strike in 1921 and after a second strike in 1922 he was reprimanded and removed from the position at the end of 1921

It was in the discussion of educational policy at the 11th Party Congress in March 1922 that Lenin gave this judgment of Preobrazhensky: "If the Party is directed like this, it would really lead to ruin. Not because comrade Preobrazhensky incorrectly understands politics in general, but because he approaches everything ...[as] a theoretician, looking for definite, usual and accustomed limits, a propagandist who works with various measures directed towards propaganda. Everyone knows and values his strong side, but when he comes up with a political and administrative point of view, something monstrous comes out."

In the mid-1920s Preobrazhensky married Polina Semenovna Vinogradskaia, with whom he had a son, Igor. Polina was active in the Zhenotdel (the Bolshevik women's organization) and served on the editorial board of its journal, Kommunistka (Communist Woman). Later she worked for Riazanov in the Institute of Marxism-Leninism

First Expulsion
A few months before the Fifteenth Congress, the Politburo forbid publication of the opposition's platform in the usual discussion preceding a party congress. The opposition decided to print and distribute the platform clandestinely. On 12-13 September 1927 the OGPU seized a duplicating machine that was being used to run off copies of the Opposition's platform. Preobrazhensky, along with Mrachkovsky & Serebryakov, claimed responsibility for the machine and were expelled from the party in October. Mrachkovsky was immediately arrested ; Preobrazhensky and Serebryakov were exiled to Siberia in December.

Pierre Naville, who visited Rakovsky at the couple's home in the autumn of 1927 "remarked on the atmosphere of comradeliness and simplicity which, he says, 'was impossible to find anywhere else at the time'."

Capitulation
In July 1929 Preobrazhensky, Radek and Smilga announced that they had broken “ideologically and organizationally with Trotsky. <!-- 14 July 1929: From Cliff's Trotsky: The darker the night the brighter the star 1927-1940, chapter 4. At http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/04-trotussr.html. On 14 July Pravda published the capitulation statement of Radek, Preobrazhensky and Smilga:

We, the undersigned, declare our agreement with the political general line of the Party and our break with the Opposition ...

We believe that the policy of industrialisation of the country, translated into the concrete figures of the Five-Year Plan, is the programme for the construction of socialism and the consolidation of the class position of the proletariat. The carrying out of the Five-Year Plan solves the fundamental questions of the revolution in the present period, and that is why we believe it to be our Bolshevik duty to take an active part in the struggle for the implementation of the Plan.

We support the struggle against the kulaks, who over the last few years have carried out obstinate attacks against the economic position of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We salute the policy of the large construction of state farms and collective farms, these levers for the economic transformation of agriculture.

... We support the fight against the Right which objectively reflects the discontent of the capitalists and petty bourgeois elements of the country against the offensive socialist policy carried by the party.

... We believe Leninism is the ideological basis for communism. We have nothing in common with the theory of permanent revolution of L.D. Trotsky. The development of the Russian and Chinese revolutions have demonstrated its inaptitude and inexactitude. To defend this theory is nothing other than to revise Leninism. Its practical application would lead the proletariat into isolating itself from its class allies and to defeat. [56] [56] Pravda, 14 July 1929. - - - - Before 9 October 1929: From Cliff's Trotsky: The darker the night the brighter the star 1927-1940, chapter 4. At http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/04-trotussr.html. The impact of the capitulation of Radek, Preobrazhensky and Smilga on the other Oppositionists was very serious indeed. E.B. Solntsev wrote to Rakovsky:

What I was writing to you a month ago as a possible perspective has today become reality. Catastrophe befell. Panic and confusion rule. People are searching for individual solutions to the situation. Internal reports which already then were far from being good, have now become truly insufferable everywhere ... Complete ideological and moral degeneration: no one trusts anyone, no one believes anyone. An atmosphere of mutual suspicion has been created ... a distancing and isolation from each other. Everyone fears being betrayed ... Thus each tries to slide themselves into the party on the backs of others. The dam is open ...

In addition to the 400 Oppositionists who joined Radek, Preobrazhensky and Smilga in the act of capitulation, another 612 left the Opposition individually or in small groups. [59] [59] Correspondance internationale, No.102, 9 October 1929, p.1415; Cahiers Léon Trotsky, No.7/8. - - - - In Autumn 1929: From THE CASE OF Leon Trotsky Thirteenth Session (Part 1): XV. RADEK at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/session13_b.htm In the autumn of 1929 Rakovsky describes how Preobrazhensky and Radek entered the path of capitulation: “The former did it with a certain measure of consistency, the latter, as always, with evasions and jumps from extreme left to extreme right, and vice versa.” (Bulletin of the Opposition, No.7, November-December 1929.) Rakovsky observes sarcastically that each capitulator, on deserting the Opposition, is obliged “to kick at Trotsky with hoofs” shod with “Radekist nails.” All these citations speak for themselves. No, the capitulations are not a military ruse of “Trotskyism”! [Note "not a military ruse" - given their involvement in 1932 in underground opposition w/i USSR, is this a false flag?] -->

Trotsky, still in opposition, wrote of their capitulation:"The capitulation of Radek, Smilga, Preobrazhensky, is in its way a major political fact. It shows above all how completely a great and heroic generation of revolutionists, whose destiny it was to pass through the experiences of the war and the October Revolution, has spent itself. Three old and meritorious revolutionists have removed their names from the roll of the living. They have deprived themselves of the most important thing, the right to command confidence. This they can never regain."

Many historians offer a similar judgment. Alternatively the capitulation can be seen to arise "precisely out of the courage of their political convictions.... In retrospect, we may say the sooner these leaders rallied to Stalin, the more far-sightedness they displayed."

Execution
In 1931 Preobrazhensky was expelled again for smuggling in "the Trotskyite contraband" and of the "right opportunistic deviation." He was readmitted the following year and in 1934 he gave a repentant speech at the Seventeenth Party Congress, saying that "If you cannot force yourselve to speak teh way the party speaks, you should still go with the party, should speak like everyone else, don't try to act smart, have more trust in the party."

In 1935 he was expelled and then on 20 December 1936 he was arrested and appeared as a prosecution witness against Zinoviev and Kamenev at their trial in Moscow in 1936. He himself was a defendant in the trial of Radek and Piatakov in 1937, but because he refused to confess he did not appear at his own trial. He was shot on 13 July 1937, the day the verdict of death was delivered.

Politics
Preobrazhensky described himself to John Maynard Keynes as being a "professional revolutionary". His economic critique was animated by "the desire to broaden the democracy of worker and party" through creating "a large, well-educated industrial working class that could manage society democratically in its own interests."

Barrington Moore, commenting on the conflict in the NEP era "between the requirements of efficiency ... and the goals of the Communist Party" observed that Preobrazhensky (at the XII Congress in 1923 ) "put his finger on the difficulty, pointing out that under the NEP, in which government and private industry competed to a considerable extent, the socialist managers who were able to operate their plants with the greatest possible profit might not be the ones who were doing the Party and the working class the most good on a long-run basis."

Economic Theory
In his 1966 review of the English translation of The New Economics Evsey Domar wrote that Preobrazhensky "was one of the brightest lights of the Golden Age of Soviet economic thought in the nineteen-twenties" who "showed a keen understanding of the basic issues" and whose "implied model is still applicable to many underdeveloped countries where modern industry is but an island in a peasant sea...." He is described in the Dictionary of Marxist Thought as "one of the most creative and important Marxist economists of this [the 20th] century.... one of the very few economists to date who have developed Marxian economics rather than repeated Marx's economics." .

Foremost among his many contributions to economic theory is having been "the first Marxist to attempt to adapt Marx's analysis of capitalist industrialization to Soviet conditions" with his "brilliant conceptual extension of Marx's schemes of reproduction." , making him "the first socialist economist to attempt to develop a theory of socialist development".

R. W. Davies wrote that "Preobrazhensky was a percipient economist."

He has been credited with "anticipating Harrod's theory" of growth, discovering "what Keynesians would later refer to as the 'foreign trade multiplier,'".

Preobrazhensky influenced a number of Marxist economists, most notably Paul Baran, who attended a course given by Preobrazhensky in Moscow in the 1930s and later described Prebrazhensky as "one of the most brilliant economists in the Communist Party."

From N.E.P. to Socialism
He argued for priority being given to vocational education so as to build a larger, more homogeneous, and skilled working class: "Then, the development of a system of technical education of the workers had a great influence. Every working-class youth who had undergone technical training was acquainted with the elements of a number of trades. The children of unskilled workers and the children of peasants who had emigrated to the towns studied on an equal footing with the children of skilled workers. The level of skill of all sections of the workers became more equal, and it was no longer possible to pay young workers who had been through technical school as though they were unskilled, even in those cases when they were assigned to unskilled work.  As regards inequality of payment between the workers and the technical personnel – this too began to be evened out, as the higher technical schools filled up with students who were all from the workers’ faculties, and later with young workers from the lower and middle technical schools. This entailed a gradual regeneration of the tissue of the entire cadre of specialists in the country. The new, Red worker-engineers looked on themselves as merely more highly skilled workers than the rest of the proletariat and did not expect to be paid for their work at such rates as the bourgeois specialists demanded."

The New Economics
In 1959 Isaac Deutscher wrote that in this book Preobrazhensky "made the first serious and still unequaled attempt to apply the 'categories' of Marx's "Das Kapital" to the Soviet economy.... [T]he "New Economics" remains a landmark in Marxist thought. The anticipatory analysis it gave of the processes of primitive socialist accumulation will remain topical as long as there are under-developed countries in the world which strive to industrialize on a socialist basis."

In a 1979 article, Donald Filtzer wrote that "Preobrazhensky broke new ground in several areas of economic theory. By integrating both a value and an in natura analysis of production and exchange in the state and peasant sectores, he anticipated much of modern input-output theory. He was also one of the first to pose the in natura and temporal problems of fixed capital accumulation.... Finally he can be said to be one of the pioneers of the economics of development, for he disaggregated the economy into two sectors with different techniques of production and divisions of their productive forces, and then analyzed the patterns of their interdependence."

Later Writings
Donald Filtzer notes: "As late as 1933 ... we find Soviet articles attacking his "egalitarian" theories of wages and work incentives, which clashed head on with the policy of extreme individualization of incentives (piece rates, "shock work", and the like) then being put in place."

Theory of a Depreciating Currency
Donald Filtzer stated that Preobrazhensky's "theoretical grasp of money and finance allowed him to be one of the first to understand that rapid inflation, by lowering the real price of labor power and accelerating the amortization of fixed capital, allowed Germany, and to a lesser extent France, to use a falling currency as a vehicle for the massive re-equipment of fixed capital stock."

The Decline of Capitalism
In this work, Preobrazhensky developed "a fully Marxian scheme of monopolistic accumulation and crisis".

Richard B. Day's assesment of this work was that "[i]n its fidelity to the method of Capital, The Decline of Capitalism was without doubt one of the most impressive works ever to appear in Soviet Russia.... Better than any other Marxist writing of its day, The Decline of Capitalism demonstrated the inherent flexibility of the tradition of cycle theory begun in Capital.... No other work of remotely comparable theoretical quality was produced after 1931."

Autobiography and Biography
Like many other prominent Bolsheviks, Preobrazhensky contributed an autobiography for the Деятели Союза Советских Социалистических Республик и Октябрьской революции: автобиографии и биографии. . It is available (in Russian) on-line at http://www.biografija.ru/show_bio.aspx?id=109131. A partial translation to English, with a supplementary biographical note by one of the editors is in
 * Makers of the Russian revolution: biographies of Bolshevik leaders by Georges Haupt; Jean Jacques Marie (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1974, pp. 192-201.

The fullest biographical treatment of his life in English is: This incorporates much unique material, such as from his son Leonid's memoirs and Soviet archives.
 * Life and works of Evgenii Alekseevich Preobrazhenskii by M.M. Gorinov and S.V. Tsakunov, Translated by Konstantin Gurevic in Slavic Review, Vol. 50 No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 286-296.

Also useful for highlighting the connection between Preobrazhensky's politics and economics:
 * Portrait: Evgeny Preobrazhensky by Donald Filtzer in Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs Vol. 22 No. 1 (March-April 1979) pp. 64-6.

There are two biographical articles in Russian:
 * Евгений Преображенский: становление революционера by М. М. Горинов in Отечественная история No. 1 (1999).
 * Горинов М.М., Цакунов С.В. Евгений Преображенский: трагедия революционера// Отечественная история No. 2 (1992).

Major works
Preobrazhensky's major economic works are:
 * From NEP to Socialism.
 * The New Economics. The second chapter of The New Economics, titled The Law of Primitive Socialist Accumulation, was originally presented to the Communist Academy in August 1924 as The Fundamental Law of Socialist Accumulation. In his presentation of Preobrazhensky's argument in Socialism in One Country Carr records any significant variations between the two versions.
 * The Decline of Capitalism (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe Izdatel'stvo, 1931).

Preobrazhensky's description of the printing press as the "machine-gun of the Commissariat of Finance which poured its fire into the rear of the bourgeois order" is in:
 * Bumazhnye den'gi v epokhu proletarskoi diktatury (Paper Money in the Epoch of the Proletarian Dictatorship) (Tiflis: Gosizdat, 1921).

Two of his more noteworthy writings on the Marxist theory of money are :
 * Причины падения курса нашего рубля (The Reasons for the Fall in the Exchange Rate of Our Ruble)
 * Теория падающей валюты (A Theory of Depreciating Currency)

In The Crisis of Soviet Industrialization pages 237-40 Filtzer presents a selected bibliography of Preobrazhensky's writings that "lists the books and articles written by Preobrazhensky from 1920 to 1931".

Several of his writings on politics are:
 * The ABC of Communism (with N. Bukharin) available at Marxists Internet Archive and in several English translations.
 * Anarkhizm i kommunizm [Anarchism and Communism] (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1921).
 * [Speech given at the graveside of V.I. Lenin], VKA 11 (1925).
 * Trekhletie Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii [The Third Anniversary of the October Revolution] (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1920).

On the agrarian problem:
 * Krst'ianskaia Rossi i sotsializm (k peresmotru nashei agrarnoi programmy) [Peasant Russia and Socialism (Toward a Reconsideration of our Agrarian Program)] (Petrograd: Priboi, 1918).
 * O krest'ianskikh kommunakh (razgovor kommunista-bol'shevika s krest'ianinom [On the Peasant Communes (Conversation of a Communist-Bolshevik with a Peasant)] (Kiev: Narodnyi Komissariat po Voennym Delam Ukrainy: 1919).

Cultural issues:
 * O material'noi baze kul'tury v sotsialisticheskom obshchestve [On the material Basis of Culture in Socialist Society] (Moscow: Vserossiiskii Proletkul't, 1923).
 * O morali i klassovykh normakh [On Morality and Class Norms] (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1921).

On the transition from capitalism to socialism

 * 1) Preobrazhenski and the Economics of Soviet Industrialization by Alexander Erlich in The Quarterly Journal of Economics vol. 64, no. 1 (February 1950), pp. 57-88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881959.
 * 2) The Soviet industrialization debate, 1924-1928 by Alexander Erlich (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960). OCLC 227754.
 * 3) Preobrazhensky and the Theory of the Transition Period by Richard B. Day in Soviet Studies XXVIII, no. 2 (April 1975), pp. 196–219. http://www.jstor.org/stable/150589.
 * 4) Preobrazhensky and the problem of the Soviet transition by Donald Filtzer in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 1748-8605, Vol. 9 No.1 Summer 1978, pages 63 – 84. DOI: 10.1080/03017607808413225.

Primitive Socialist Accumulation

 * 1) On 'Primitive' and Other Forms of Socialist Accumulation by R. B. Day in Labour/Le Travailleur No.10 (Autumn, 1982), 10 pgs. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25140145.
 * 2) Preobrazhensky's theory of primitive socialist accumulation by Richard C.K. Burdekin in Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1752-7554, Vol. 19 No.3, 1989, Pages 297 – 307.
 * 3) The economics of price scissors: A defence of Preobrazhensky by Jean-Marie Baland in European Economic Review Vol. 37 No. 1 (January 1993) pp. 37-60. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/001429219390069M.
 * 4) On a Mistake of Preobrazhensky and Stalin by Michael Ellman in Journal of Development Studies, April 1978. http://dare.uva.nl/record/107312.
 * 5) Did the Agricultural Surplus Provide the Resources for the Increase in Investment in the USSR during the First Five Year Plan? by Michael Ellman in Economic Journal, Vol. 85 (December, 1975) pp. 844-63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2230627.
 * 6) The Discussions of the Twenties on Planning and Economic Growth by Maurice Dobb in Soviet Studies, Vol. 17 No. 2 (Oct., 1965), pp. 198-208. http://www.jstor.org/pss/149995. From "Russian economic history" by Daniel R. Kazmer and Vera Kazmer (1977): "Much attention is given to the work of the Soviet economist Preobrazhensky."
 * 7) Was Stalin Really Necessary? by James Millar and Alec Nove in Problems of Communism Vol. XXV No. 4 (July-August 1976).
 * 8) Primary Accumulation in the Soviet Transition by Mark Harrison in Journal of Development Studies Vol. 22 No. 1 (1985), pp. 81-103. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/public/jds85postprint.pdf.
 * 9) Soviet Primary Accumulation Processes: Some Unresolved Problems by M Harrison in Science and Society Vol. 45 No. 4 (1981/82) pp. 387-408. http://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/152.html.
 * 10) Revolutionary Intellectuals and the Soviet Union by Rossana Rossanda in Socialist Register (1974). http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5324/2225.
 * 11) A Note on Primitive Accumulation in Marx and Preobrazhensky by James R. Millar in Soviet Studies vol. 30 no. 3 (July 1978), p. 392. http://www.jstor.org/stable/150705.

Marxist Economics

 * 1) What Did the Study of the Soviet Economy Contribute to Mainstream Economics? by Michael Ellman in Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 51, issue 1 pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.1057/ces.2008.42.
 * 2) Soviet Primary Accumulation Processes: Some Unresolved Problems by M Harrison in Science and Society Vol. 45 No. 4 (1981/82) pp. 387-408. http://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/152.html.
 * 3) Testing Early Soviet Economic Alternatives by Holland Hunter and Janusz M. Szyrmer in Slavic Review, Vol. 50 No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 253-267. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2500201.
 * 4) The Soviet ideology of industrialization: A review article by M Kaser in Journal of Development Studies Vol. 3 No. 1 (October 1966) pp. 63 - 75. DOI: 10.1080/00220386608421208.
 * 5) A Reassessment of the Soviet Industrial Revolution by Robert C. Allen in Comparative Economic Studies, Vol. 47 (2005). http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v47/n2/pdf/8100101a.pdf.
 * 6) Soviet Industrialization Reconsidered: Some Preliminary Conclusions about Economic Development between 1926 and 1941 by S. G. Wheatcroft, R. W. Davies and J. M. Cooper in The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 39 No. 2 (May, 1986), pp. 264-294. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2596153.
 * 7) Lenin and Bukharin on the transition from capitalism to socialism: The Meshchersky controversy, 1918 by H. Ray Buchanan in Europe-Asia Studies 28.1 (1976) pp. 66 – 82. DOI: 10.1080/09668137608411042.
 * 8) On the Political Economy of the Transition Period by Paresh Chattopadhyay in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 6, No. 30/32, Special Number (Jul., 1971), pp. 1709+1711-1718. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4382354.
 * 9) Economic Education and Economic Research in the Soviet Union by I. Zvavich in The Economic Journal Vol. 53, No. 212 (Dec., 1943), pp. 415-418. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2226411.

Inflation theory

 * 1) Central Planning and Unintended Consequences: Creating the Soviet Financial System, 1930-1939 by Paul R. Gregory and Aleksei Tikhonov in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Dec., 2000), pp. 1017-1040. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2698085.
 * 2) The Contribution of Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovsky to Monetary Economics by I. S. Koropeckyj in History of Political Economy, Spring 1991; 23: 61 - 78. http://hope.dukejournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/23/1/61.
 * 3) Financial Stabilization and a way out of the Crisis. Lessons from the Soviet Chervonetz (in Russian) by Y. Goland in Kommunist No. 3 (1991) pp. 54-64, and No 4, pp. 57-66.

Reproduction Schemas

 * 1) Dobb and the Marx-Fel'dman model: a problem in Soviet economic strategy by Alexander Erlich in Cambridge Journal of Economics 1978, 2 pp. 203-214. http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/2/2/203.
 * 2) Marx and Contemporary Models of Socialist Economy by John E. Elliott in History of Political Economy, Summer 1976; 8: 151 – 184. http://hope.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/8/2/151.
 * 3) Economic Thought in the Soviet Union by A. Zauberman in The Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1948 - 1949), pp. 1-12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2296139.


 * 1) Hyperinflation and Monetary Reform in the Soviet Union, 1921-26 by Joyce E. Pickersgill in The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 76, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1968), pp. 1037-1048. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1830035.
 * 2) Planning and the Real Origins of Input-Output Analysis by D. L. Clark in Journal of Contemporary Asia Vol. 14 No. 4 (1984).
 * 3) Tugan-Baranovsky as a pioneer of trade cycle analysis by Vincent Barnett in Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Volume 23, Issue 4 December 2001, pages 443 – 466. DOI: 10.1080/10427710120096956.
 * 4) Social technology and political economy: the debate on the soviet origins of input-output analysis by Amanar Akhabbar (unpublished paper – draft – do not quote: History of Economics Research Group Second Workshop 21 December 2006 Nanterre University).

The ABC of Communism

 * 1) The Mystery of the ABC by Lars T. Lih in Slavic Review, Vol. 56 No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 50-72. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2500655.

Oppositional activities

 * 1) Trotsky and Preobrazhensky: The Troubled Unity of the Left Opposition by Richard Day in Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. X, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer, 1977) pp. 69-86. DOI: 10.1016/S0039-3592(77)80077-X.
 * 2) The Left Opposition in 1923 by David S. Law in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 1748-8605, Vol. 2 No.1, 01 1974, Pages 37 – 52.
 * 3) Support for the Opposition in Moscow in the Party Discussion of 1923-1924 by Darron Hincks in Soviet Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1 (1992), pp. 137-151. http://www.jstor.org/pss/152252.


 * 1) The Left Communist Movement of 1918: A preliminary analysis of its regional strength in Study Group on the Russian Revolution: Sbornik No. 12 (1986).