PRESS RELEASE
Economist Glazyev in the Russian Academy of Sciences
May 29, 2008 (EIRNS)—Economist Sergei Glazyev's elevation to full membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences is welcome news in his own country and abroad, for everybody who grasps the importance of a flourishing Russia, as Eurasia's keystone nation, for the world. Glazyev has fought relentlessly, in the political arena and in economic science, in defense of Russia's physical economic development and the welfare of its population. He is known for taking surprising and courageous actions: in 1993, he was the only member of the Russian Government to quit the cabinet when President Boris Yeltsin abolished the Russian Parliament (Supreme Soviet) for refusing to adopt the full free-trade and privatization agenda that was to wreck Russia for most of the 1990s.
In June 2001, Glazyev, then Chairman of the State Duma's Committee on Economic Policy, held hearings on the subject of "Measures to Protect the National Economy Under Conditions of Global Financial Crisis" (see "LaRouches Address Russia's Destiny at Hearings of the Duma in Moscow"). As lead-off witness, he invited U.S. economist Lyndon LaRouche. Other speakers included the late Academician Dmitri S. Lvov, economists Andrei Kobyakov and Tatyana Koryagina, and Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. In an interview with the nationalist weekly Zavtra earlier this month, titled "Ten Steps To Rein In the Crisis," Glazyev recalled those hearings, saying that "if the leaders of the Central Bank and the government had listened to the recommendations from the Parliamentary hearings, which we held seven years ago," losses Russia has already sustained in the current financial collapse could have been avoided.
Glazyev's election at yesterday's general assembly of the Academy was announced as filling a vacancy in its Economics section. Thus, Academician Glazyev effectively takes the seat of his teacher, long-time collabotor, and friend, the late Academician Dmitri S. Lvov, who died in 2007. Academician Lvov, who especially fought the looting of Russia's raw materials, carried on a public dialogue with LaRouche on questions of physical economy, over the course of more than ten years.
It is noteworthy that the Academy candidacy of Vladimir Mau, one of the London Institute of Economic Affairs-trained economists who drove privatization and deregulation in the 1990s, failed to be voted up.
Born in the steel belt of Ukraine, Sergei Glazyev studied economics at Moscow State University, doing his post-graduate work under Professor Lvov at the Central Mathematical Economics Institute (CEMI) of the Academy of Sciences. In 1991, at the age of 31, he became first deputy minister, and then minister of foreign economic relations of the Russian Federation — part of the team of "young reformers" who had been groomed by foreign free-trade fanatics to take over post-Soviet Russian economic policy and bind it hard and fast into the process of globalization. Based on what he witnessed as a cabinet member, Glazyev rebelled against this policy, then quit the government in the 1993 crisis. In his 1998 book Genocide, Glazyev wrote that "the rate of annual population loss [in Russia that decade] has been more than double the rate of loss during the period of repression and mass famine in the first half of the 1930s. ... There has been nothing like this in the thousand-year history of Russia." (EIR News Service published the English edition of Genocide in 1999.)
Glazyev was elected to the State Duma as a leader of the Democratic Party of Russia in 1993, and again on the Communist Party slate, several years later. In 2003, his recently-founded Rodina (Homeland) Party shocked the political scene by polling 9 percent in State Duma elections. Glazyev mounted a run for the Russian Presidency in 2004, but was out-maneuvered by powerful opponents from within the Kremlin.
Glazyev did not seek re-election to the Duma last year. He is currently director of the New Economy Institute and head of the National Development Institute of the Academy of Sciences. He also chairs of the Customs Union of the Eurasian Economic Community, which groups Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In a recent media poll, he was named the most-cited Russian economist of 2007.
At a May 15, 2007 special session honoring Prof. Stanislav Menshikov, held at the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences with most of its Economics division members in attendance — and LaRouche as a foreign guest of honor — Sergei Glazyev gave this account of his mission as an economist: "It is difficult, today, to get the people dealing with economic policy in our country to think," he said, congratulating Prof. Menshikov for his ability to do that. He thanked Menshikov, saying that "what he does is truly a great deed. And he does this great deed with love for our country, and with faith that we shall succeed in overcoming stupidity and living by our own wits. ... Unlike many of my friends, who always issue pessimistic forecasts, Stanislav Mikhailovich carries a great charge of optimism, which permeates all of his work. I wish for him to keep that. I don't know about reaching the year 2027 together with Stanislav Mikhailovich, but at least for all our working lives, I wish for us to find meaning in policies for our country. Thank you very much."
The proceedings of Glazyev's 2001 hearings were published in EIR of July 20, 2001, with some testimony available online in English, and all available in Russian.
