Исаа́к Ильи́ч Ру́бин (Russian economist) Add a review

Isaak Illich Rubin (Russian: Исаак Ильич Рубин; 12 June 1886 – 27 November 1937) was a Russian Marxist economist who is considered one of the most important exponents of Karl Marx's value-form theory. His major work, Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, was first published in 1923 and went through four editions in the Soviet Union. He also wrote A History of Economic Thought and several other works on Marxist political economy.

A member of the Jewish Bund and later the Mensheviks, Rubin was a critic of the October Revolution. His scholarship, while internationally recognized, brought him into conflict with the Soviet authorities. After a series of arrests and periods of exile beginning in 1921, he was attacked during the late 1920s in a campaign against so-called "Rubinshchina" (Russian for "Rubinism"), which condemned his work as an idealistic deviation from orthodox Marxism. Following his arrest in 1930, Rubin was forced to serve as a key defendant in the 1931 Menshevik Trial. After serving his sentence in prison and exile, he was arrested again during the Great Purge and executed in 1937. He was fully rehabilitated in the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991.