Yasnopolsky, Mykola

Yasnopolsky, Mykola [Яснопольський, Микола; Jasnopol's'kyj], b 1846 in Kyiv, d 1920? Economist and statistician; father of Leonid Yasnopolsky. After graduating from the law faculty of Kyiv University he taught political economy at the Novo-Aleksandriia (now Puławy) Agricultural and Forestry Institute, the Nizhyn Lyceum, and the Kyiv Higher Courses for Women. Then he served as a professor of commercial law at Kyiv University (1889–1914). His major work was the two-volume O geograficheskom raspredelenii gosudarstvennykh dokhodov i raskhodov Rossii (On the Geographic Distribution of State Income and Expenditures in Russia, 1891–7), which showed how the peripheral territories of the Russian Empire were exploited by the tsarist capitals (see Public expenditure). He also wrote a number of important articles on the economic backwardness and future of Ukraine (1871), the railroad transportation from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea (1868), and Ukraine's trade with Poland and the Baltic countries (1873).

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