Valerian Osinski

Valerian Obolensky-Ossinsky (1887 – 1 September 1938) was a Russian revolutionary Marxist and Professor of the Agricultural Academy of Moscow.

Valerian wrote under the name Nikolai Osinsky, and was active amongst the Left Communists around the "Kommunist" journal in 1918 and later among the Democratic Centralists.

He was the first chairperson of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy but lost that position in spring 1918 due to his opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

He attended the World Social Economic Conference organised by the International Institute of Industrial Relations held at the Vereeniging Koloniaal Institute in Amsterdam. This was the first occasion that Soviet officials had travelled to the West to discuss how the Five Year Plan worked.

His daughter Svetlana Valerianovna Obolenskaya (1925-2012) was a Russian historian.

During the Great Purge, he was tried alongside V. N. Yakoleva, V. N. Mantsev, Vladimir Karelin, Boris Kamkov, I. N. Stukov, E. V. Artemenko, I. V. Zaporpzhetz, I. M. Savolainen, Grigory Ivanovich Semyonov and S. B. Chelnov. He was sentenced to death on 1 November 1937 and executed on 1 September 1938.

Texts

• “Minority Report on Building the Economy”, quoted in Robert V. Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism in Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev, University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH, 1993, p. 98