Yasnopolsky, Leonid

Yasnopolsky, Leonid [Яснопольський, Леонід; Jasnopol's'kyj], b 1 February 1873 in Kyiv, d 23 May 1957 in Moscow. Economist; full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) from 1925; son of Mykola Yasnopolsky. A graduate of Saint Petersburg University (1895), he taught economics there (1895–1902). After the Revolution of 1917 he worked for the government of the Ukrainian National Republic and served as its economic consultant in negotiations with the Bolsheviks. He also taught at Kyiv University and the Kyiv Institute of the National Economy. In 1926–30 he headed the VUAN Commission for the Study of the Productive Resources of Ukraine and edited many of its publications. After the destruction of the VUAN he moved to Moscow. He returned to Kyiv only after the Second World War, to work at the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Yasnopolsky was a prolific writer. His more important works are Ocherki russkogo biudzhetnogo prava (Essays on Russian Budgetary Law, 1912), Vosstanovitel'nyi protsess v nashem denezhnom obrashchenii i zadachi valiutnoi politiki (The Reconstruction Process in Our Monetary Circulation and the Tasks of Monetary Policy, 1927), and studies of the mineral resources and economic development of the Donets Basin and Dnipro Industrial Region.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]