Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky was born on 8 January 1865, in the village of Solenoye near Kharkov (in Ukraine, at that time part of the Russian Empire).
He received a classical education in Kiev and Kharkov. In 1883, he enrolled at St Petersburg University (physics and mathematics faculty). In 1886, he was arrested and exiled from St Petersburg to Kharkov for his participation in a student demonstration.
He continued his education in Kharkov and in 1888 graduated from the law and science faculties of Kharkov University. In 1894, he received a Master’s degree from Moscow University for a dissertation on industrial cycles and crises published in the same year (Industrial Crises in Contemporary England, Their Causes and Immediate Influence on National Life). His doctoral dissertation, on economic history, was published in 1898: Russian Factory in Past and Present. Historical Development of the Russian Factory in the Nineteenth Century.His academic career was hampered by his political views and public activity. It was interrupted in 1899 when he was dismissed for ‘political unreliability’ and had to leave St Petersburg, spending five, albeit very productive, years on his estate in Poltava Province (Ukraine). During these years he was very active as an author, editor and founder (along with P.B. Struve) of two pro-Marxist journals, Novoe slovo (New Word) and Nachalo (The Beginning). His articles were published in Mir Bozhii (God’s World), Nauchnoe obozrenie (Scientific Review), and other journals.
Tugan-Baranovsky returned to St Petersburg University in 1905, but finally moved to St Petersburg only in 1911. He also taught at the Polytechnic Institute (St Petersburg) and the Shanyavsky People’s University (Moscow). Shortly after the February Revolution he returned to Ukraine and in August 1917 accepted the post of Minister of Finance in the Ukrainian Central Rada government. After the fall of the Central Rada in January 1918, he spent some months in Moscow before returning to Ukraine to become the dean of the law faculty at Kiev University and a founder of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the Ukrainian cooperative movement.
In January 1919, he was appointed head of the Ukrainian financial mission to France. He died of a heart attack on 21 January 1919, on his way from Kiev to Odessa to board a ship for France. He was buried in Odessa.Tugan-Baranovsky had an extremely wide range of academic, social and spiritual interests. Like many other members of the Russian intelligentsia of his time he was deeply concerned with the political, social and economic prospects of Russian development, including the potential of capitalism and socialism in this country. He was not only involved in academic discussions on these matters, but also took part in the democratic movement and the political struggle. Like many Russian intellectuals he was deeply influenced by Marxism. He was attracted by its social ideal and sided with the Russian Marxists in their disputes with the narodniki (populists), arguing in favour of the possibility and reality of capitalist development in Russia. His 1898 historical and economic work - Russian Factory in Past and Present - contained a detailed analysis of industrial development in Russia and related socioeconomic trends, including the development of large- and small-scale industry in different historical periods, state policy, changes in legislation, and so on. This book became a weighty argument in support of the thesis that capitalist development in Russia was inevitable and already on the way.
Differences between Tugan-Baranovsky and the Marxists came to light at the very beginning of his research activities. V.I. Lenin called Tugan-Baranovsky, and also N.A. Berdyaev and S.N. Bulgakov, “legal Marxists”. This became something of a cliche used in virtually all publications on the history of Russian thought. With this description, Lenin expressed his disapproval of the readiness of these economists to discuss the country’s socioeconomic problems and Marxist issues in the legal (according to Lenin, bourgeois) press. But these differences had deeper roots and were connected with the attitude to Marxism in general. In contrast to Lenin, who took a rather dogmatic and radical view of Marxism, Tugan-Baranovsky assessed different aspects of Marx’s economic theory differently, criticizing some of its key elements such as the labour theory of value and the theory of surplus value.