Maria Smith-Falkner


Maria Natanovna Smith-Falkner was a Soviet economist, statistician and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union from 1939 onward. She was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, having joined the Mensheviks in 1918.

Biography

She was born into the family of a Jewish merchant. In 1901 she went to London to study at the London School of Economics, returning to Russia in 1905. She then got involved with the 1905 revolution. She joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and was arrested four times. This included an occasion in December 1905, when she organised an illegal conference in Moscow of the trade union of textile workers. She was arrested with the entire delegation of the Saint Petersburg Soviet.
Smith-Falkner's research was focused on the issues of political economy of capitalism and socialism. Her scientific interests were: economics of capitalism and socialism, statistics theory, the status of the working class in the Western countries, etc. She conducted her research at the Institute of Economic Studies attached to the Gosplan and the Economic Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
Maria Smith-Falkner edited the works by David Ricardo and Sir William Petty to be published in the Soviet Union.

Major works