Yevgeni Preobrazhensky

Yevgeni Preobrazhensky
Евгений Преображенский
Member of the 9th Secretariat
In office 5 April 1920 – 16 March 1921
Personal details
Born	27 February [O.S. 15 February] 1886 Bolkhov, Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	13 February 1937 (aged 50) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution
Political party	RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1903–1918) Russian Communist Party (1918–1927, 1930–1933)

Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky (Russian: Евге́ний Алексе́евич Преображе́нский, IPA: [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɪtɕ prʲɪəbrɐˈʐɛnskʲɪj]; 27 February [O.S. 15 February] 1886 – 13 February 1937) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist economist. His main contribution to Marxist theory is the concept of "primitive socialist accumulation", which holds that industrialization in an underdeveloped and agrarian economy such as Russia's in 1917 must rely on the squeezing of agriculture, for example by the socialist state buying agricultural goods at low prices and selling back industrial goods at high prices.

Preobrazhensky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, and after the establishment of Soviet Russia became a party secretary and member of the Central Committee in 1920. During the 1920s, he opposed Joseph Stalin's bureaucratization and centralization of the party and advocacy of "socialism in one country", becoming linked to Leon Trotsky and a leader of the Left Opposition movement. In 1927, he was removed from the party on Stalin's orders, but was re-admitted in 1930 after Stalin had moved towards his favored policies. During Stalin's Great Purge, Preobrazhensky was arrested in 1935 and shot in 1937.