The Science of Kindness

February 26 marks the 70th birthday of Vladimir Avtonomov, Doctor of Science in Economics, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Academic Supervisor of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, In this interview with HSE University Life, he speaks about his love of music, the importance of taking walks with his dog, and his passion for foreign languages.

First Non-Military in My Family

I'll start with my family story. On my father's side, most of my relatives have pursued military careers. My dad had a lifelong passion for automobiles and wanted to become an automotive engineer, but following the advice of his father, a career military officer, he enrolled in the Gorky School of Anti-Aircraft Artillery. Upon graduation, he and his fellow students were immediately sent to the frontlines to defend Moscow, as WWII was underway. My dad became a battery commander, and after the war, he graduated from the Military Academy and continued his service at the Ministry of Defence. He retired with the rank of colonel. He could have been promoted to general, but he chose not to—perhaps because he didn't enjoy commanding. I never considered myself to have commanding abilities either, but Yaroslav Kuzminov apparently saw them in me, and I ended up leading the faculty for eleven years.

My farsighted grandfather was a staff captain in the Tsarist Army, fought in the First World War, and later joined the Red Army. He was beloved by his soldiers, fought against gangs in the Urals, later taught tactics and topography at a military college, and rose to the rank of colonel. His father, Dmitry Avtonomov, was an artilleryman, just like my dad. Despite having military careers, they were not combative people at all. For example, my dad did not want me to continue the military tradition in our family.

My mother's family was of Crimean Karaite descent and lived in Nizhny Novgorod. They were relatively affluent and, before the revolution, ran a sewing workshop on Pokrovka, the city's main street. In Nizhny Novgorod, my mother graduated from a pedagogical institute where she trained as a history teacher, but for most of her life, she focused on raising her children—my older sister and me.

My sister Natasha has played a very important role in my life. It was her childhood dream to have a little brother. When Natasha learned that her dream would come true, she began saving money for a camel blanket—the one they wrapped me in when I was born. By that time, my parents, who had been renting while my father was in training, were given a room in a communal apartment shared with other families in Babushkin, just outside Moscow. Later, when I turned five, we moved into our own apartment in Moscow.

Did Not Inherit My Father's Love of Machinery

Mum was the homemaker, while Dad took care of the financial aspects of our lives. He also took me to various exhibitions. Machinery remained his passion—I did not inherit it, though. We used to visit VDNKh and Sokolniki to see foreign equipment on display, and we also watched the construction of the Metro in Moscow. Dad was genuinely interested in all of this. The rest of my intellectual development was guided by my sister Natasha. It was thanks to her that I was convinced from childhood that pursuing science was both a worthwhile and fascinating endeavour. I also owe my passion for music to her. She played the piano and enrolled at the Academic Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. However, after her first year, she realised that she wouldn’t become a great pianist due to her small hands, so she dropped out and instead enrolled in the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University. It was a challenging moment for our family and, perhaps, the reason why I never learned to play a musical instrument, despite having a good ear and a love for music. I have a large collection of vinyl records and several thousand CDs, and I still listen to something from it almost every day. I especially love opera, symphonic, and piano music. As for composers, my favourites are Bach, Schubert, Schnittke, Sviridov, Gavrilin, and many others. Later, by the time I was an economist, a PhD, and a father, I decided to enrol in a music school. However, I didn’t study there for long, as I realised I wouldn't be able to fully focus on it. I needed to write a book, which eventually evolved into my doctoral dissertation. So, I dropped out of music classes. But now, to my great joy, my granddaughter sings in the children's choir at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. And at some point, my deputy Tamara Protasevich and I organised a choir at HSE University. I really enjoyed that we had a choir, and I even performed as a soloist there from time to time

Schumpeter and Intuition

When I was seven, my parents asked Natasha to teach me English. At that time, foreign language classes in most schools started in fifth grade. When I reached fifth grade, our class was assigned to learn German, and many of my classmates switched to classes where English was taught. Since I had already learned a little English from my sister by then, I thought, why not learn German? Later, I also learned Swedish and French—and I’ve never regretted it.

Moreover, thanks to my knowledge of languages, I discovered Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an Austrian-American economist and sociologist whose work shaped my research interests for many years. It was after I had already graduated from university and was working at IMEMO (the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences). My friend, former fellow student, and now colleague at HSE University, Alexander Chepurenko, once approached me with a proposal to translate Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development into Russian. Later, it ended up that I had either translated or edited the translations of all of Schumpeter's economic works published in Russian. I consider the translation of his History of Economic Analysis to be my greatest achievement in this field. The original 1,200 pages of small-print English text resulted in three volumes of Russian translation. One could say that Schumpeter speaks Russian through me. I still turn to him for new ideas and recommend that my students, when in doubt, look for answers in Schumpeter's work, as they will surely find something valuable there. This man still fascinates me with his style, unpredictability, colossal erudition, and the scale of his endeavour.

A scientist and an entrepreneur are two completely different types of people. Unlike a scientist, an entrepreneur cannot approach all things systematically; they often need to take risks and act intuitively in response to the situation at hand. As Napoleon once said, ‘on s'engage partout, et puis l'on voit’—'you get involved, and then you see what happens.’ However, I cannot say that intuition doesn't have a place in my life as a scientist. Some ideas come to me in my dreams or while I'm walking my dog. One day, during one of these walks, I came up with an idea similar to Mendeleev's periodic table, though not as groundbreaking: a matrix of modern economics, where the rows represent directions, and the columns represent areas of research. This matrix can be found in my books.

Untranslatable Wordplay

My uncle twice removed, Mikhail Gasparov, influenced the development of my interests. He was an outstanding expert in ancient Greek and Latin literature and in Russian versification, and a person who knew a great deal about many subjects. He would take his daughter and me to the Pushkin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery, where he explained icons to us, as well as Russian and European paintings, from the most ancient to the most recent. I remember we would listen to him, afraid to miss a single word. Later, he continued to influence me indirectly through my reading of his texts.

My sister Natasha co-authored his article on Shakespeare's sonnets in Marshak's translations. Later, after earning her PhD and then becoming a Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy, she translated philosophical literature. She was the first to translate Michel Foucault into Russian and one of the first to translate Jacques Derrida. French structuralists spoke Russian through her voice. I also had an interesting translation-related experience when I was a university student. One time, I bought a book titled Three Centuries of German Epigrams in German at the Druzhba bookstore, which I visited regularly. I started reading and suddenly noticed that I was trying to translate them into Russian in my mind. I began showing some of these translations to my friends but never really intended to take it any further. One day, a good friend of mine, the musicologist and excellent poetry translator Alexey Parin, heard about it and suggested that I translate a page of 17th-century Swedish epigrams for the Library of World Literature book series. So, I translated them.

I should mention that both of my children have inherited this family talent for translation. My son has translated several serious books, and my daughter, although not involved in economics, translates economic literature, perfectly grasping the context.

When Poetry Strikes You

After the episode with the translation of epigrams, I began writing poetry for special occasions, usually for a colleague's dissertation defence, and my poems were always humorous. At IMEMO, I worked in the sector headed by Revold Entov, and I would compose an ode to mark each special event. I clearly remember the ode I wrote to celebrate the PhD dissertation defence of Andrey Poletayev, founder and director of the Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI).

For my 50th birthday, the HSE University Publishing House printed a single copy of a book featuring my most successful poems and epigrams. I haven't written much poetry since, perhaps because all my friends defended their dissertations long ago.

My Teachers

From the very beginning, it was especially important to me who my teacher was and whether I wanted to learn from them and listen to them. This was the case when, as a high school student, I enrolled in the Economics and Mathematics School at the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University and observed the university students who taught there. I thought to myself, ‘These are the kind of people I want to be around and be like.’ In fact, this school is phenomenal—it was established in 1967 and is still in existence today. Its founder, Leonid Grigoryev, is a faculty member at HSE University, and we continue to maintain a very close relationship. We read each other's papers, although I can't boast of having written as many as Prof. Grigoryev.

Another individual who inspired my love for economics was Andrey Anikin—a brilliant economist and writer of articles, monographs, and science fiction. My acquaintance with him began at a bookstall at MSU, where I saw his book A Science in Its Youth: Pre-Marxian Political Economy. I bought the book, read it, and that became the second reason why I decided to become an economist.

I enrolled in the Faculty of Economics at MSU, in the Department of Economics of Foreign Countries. When the director of the Economics and Mathematics School, Vadim Ivanov, asked me who the academic supervisor of my term paper was and found out it wasn’t Entov, he was very surprised and urged me, 'Go to him immediately and ask him to be your academic supervisor.' Prof. Entov was perhaps the most important teacher to me. At MSU, he taught a seminar on the economics of imperialism, which I attended. He brought to MSU the spirit of an entirely different place—the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO RAS).

After completing my university studies with honours, I joined IMEMO, specifically the Sector of Economic Cycle Research, led by Prof. Entov, in the Department of the US Economy. Essentially, I continued my studies while at IMEMO. Prof. Entov used to tell us, the young economists working in his sector, ‘You should strive to write in a way that your paper could be published in the American Economic Review.’ Although at some point I realised that the work being done in the sector wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, I first discovered psychological (behavioural) economics, and only later became interested in the history of economic doctrines, which I continue to focus on today.

As the head of the Centre for the History and Methodology of Economic Science, my position today is similar to the one Prof. Entov held back then. However, I am a completely different person, and I don't have such a demanding leadership style. I have wonderful colleagues: our school boasts Russia's best historians and methodologists of economic science, such as Oleg Ananyin, Natalia Makasheva, and Denis Melnik. Together, we strive to support our field of research, attract interested students, and are now working to establish the Russian Association of Historians of Economic Thought.

February 26