In Memoriam: Stanislav Mikhailovich Menshikov Russian Economist Sought Dialogue With USA, Even in Perilous Times by Rachel Douglas Professor Stanislav Menshi- ences in Europe. In this activ- kov (1927-2014), the distin- ity, he not only spoke for guished Russian economist himself, but served as Europe- and expert on the United based liaison for a Russian States, died Nov. 13, 2014 in Academy of Sciences group- Amsterdam, where he lived. ing around the late Academi- He was 87. cian Dmitri S. Lvov. Menshi- Stanislav Menshikov was kov and Lvov co-chaired the one of the most energetic, col- NGO Economists against the orful, and knowledgeable par- Arms Race (ECAAR), ticipants in Soviet-American founded in 1989. relations during the height of The English edition of the Cold War, and in Russian- Menshikov’s book, The Anat- American relations thereafter. omy of Russian Capitalism, He was friends with such ad- was translated by this author visors to President John F. and brought out by EIR in Kennedy as Michael Forrestal 2007. In May of that year, EIRNS/Julien Lemaître and John Kenneth Galbraith, Stanislav Menshikov (shown here at a Schiller Institute Menshikov hosted LaRouche and interacted with a range of conference in Germany, 2007) “was one of the most as a guest of honor at his 80th U.S. establishment figures, in- energetic, colorful, and knowledgeable participants in birthday celebration, held at cluding David Rockefeller, Soviet-American relations during the height of the Cold the Academy of Sciences in War, and in Russian-American relations thereafter.” Henry Kissinger, and Zbig- Moscow; in September 2007, niew Brzezinski. he and his wife, the economist Known by insiders in both countries as uncompro- Larisa Klimenko-Menshikova, in turn, were honored mising on matters of principle, Menshikov was guests at LaRouche’s 85th birthday celebration, held in always keenly interested in an open and substantial conjunction with that month’s Kiedrich, Germany con- dialogue with Americans. In the 1980s, he became fa- ference of the Schiller Institute, “The Eurasian Land- miliar to a wider U.S. public, as a frequent guest, rep- Bridge Becomes Reality!” (See Documentation, resenting Soviet viewpoints, on TV programs hosted below.) by David Brinkley, Ted Koppel, and others. His role in disputes over economic policy within the Soviet A 20th-Century Soviet Diplomat’s Education Union at that time is less well-known, but of lasting Menshikov was fluent in English since his child- importance. hood in London, where his father, Mikhail A. Menshi- We at EIR are privileged to have known Professor kov, headed the Anglo-Russian Cooperative Society Menshikov as a personal friend of Lyndon LaRouche (ARCOS) trade office, 1930-36. In Stanislav Menshi- and Helga Zepp-LaRouche for 15 years, and a partici- kov’s memoirs, he recalled that the first time he got into pant in many EIR seminars and Schiller Institute confer- trouble, out of many such times during his long life, 30 International EIR December 12, 2014 was as a schoolboy, when he refused to sing “Rule, Bri- then as an international journalist and economics ana- tannia!” in class.1 lyst at the Soviet weekly New Times, which was pub- The senior Menshikov went on to serve as Soviet lished in a dozen languages and distributed worldwide. deputy minister, and later minister, of foreign trade; In that capacity, he traveled to Asia in 1960 in the en- Washington-based deputy head of the United Nations tourage of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchov; Menshi- Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) kov interviewed Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of (1943-46); Soviet Ambassador to India (1953-57), and India and President Sukarno of Indonesia, two nation- to the United States (1958-January 1962). Stanislav building giants who were then in the process of forming Menshikov reported that he learned from his father the Non-Aligned Movement. always to speak with foreigners, including Americans, as an equal. Millionaires and Managers Menshikov recalled digging defense works around As he increasingly concentrated on economics, the city of Moscow in his early teens, at the outbreak of Menshikov’s doctoral dissertation was an in-depth World War II. At 16 years of age, he entered what was study of who ran the American economy. Research for soon to be the Foreign Ministry’s university, the his first post-graduate degree had focused on U.S. agri- Moscow State Institute of International Relations culture and the grain trade, while his first visit to the (MGIMO), finishing as a member of its first graduating United States came in 1958, as a personal guest of his class in 1948. Two of the projects that he undertook father, the Ambassador. Now Menshikov combined there convey the depth of historical study that would scrupulous gridding of the U.S. corporate sector, with a inform his future work. 1962 stint under an IREX (International Research & As a second-year student, he was recruited by a Exchanges Board) exchange program. He interviewed Soviet Foreign Ministry economics official to an Eng- many of the subjects of his research and developed per- lish-to-Russian translation team, working to translate a sonal contacts with a wide array of other Americans. book on the economic relations between international The resulting book, Millionaires and Managers: cartels, including leading Wall Street firms, and Nazi The Structure of the Financial Oligarchy in the USA Germany. Even more striking, is Menshikov’s report of (1966), was one of the many instances in which Men- his fourth-year thesis at MGIMO, a study of “The Brit- shikov brought fresh approaches to understanding the ish Crown Prerogatives.” Though it was never pub- U.S.A., into discussions inside the Soviet Union. At his lished and is evidently not extant, Menshikov recalled May 2007 birthday celebration, one speaker after an- about this paper, “Usually the role of the British mon- other mentioned Millionaires and Managers as an eye- arch is viewed as negligible in determining the coun- opener that had changed their view of the world. try’s policy. In reality, the British Crown is a care- Later, Menshikov again shook the community of fully preserved institution of supreme state power, Communist Party economists and strategists, with his something like a collective head of state. The British publication in Russian of works by J.K. Galbraith, the Monarch, to this day, remains one of the main political former New Deal economist and JFK advisor. In 1988, figures of the Western world.” Galbraith and Menshikov would co-author a remark- Despite his top-notch training and his father’s status, able volume, about which Antony Papert wrote in EIR:2 no swift career rise was in store for Menshikov. From “Immediately before the Great Crash of October 1953 until 1957, he had the black mark of a formal 1987, the late, venerable John Kenneth Galbraith of Har- “severe reprimand” on his record, because of a teenage vard sought out Menshikov, whom he called ‘a remark- friendship with the son of a Georgian Communist who ably informed scholar,’ for ten days of discussion in Ver- had been declared an “enemy of the people.” Menshi- mont. The transcript was published simultaneously in the kov had been interrogated on the matter at secret police Soviet Union and the U.S., under the title, Capitalism, headquarters in 1944. Communism and Coexistence. Galbraith, quondam eco- Menshikov worked first as an instructor at MGIMO, nomic advisor to Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, spoke for both Menshikov and himself when he wrote 1. Stanislav Menshikov, O vremeni i o sebe (About Our Time and About Myself), (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyye Otnosheniya, 2007), in Russian 2. Antony Papert, “Russia’s 1991-2001 Descent into Hell,” EIR, Dec. only. 21, 2007. December 12, 2014 EIR International 31 there, ‘But it was not our underlying optimism, on the one hand, with that readi- purpose, . to score ness to look without blinking and without consoling il- points in our conversa- lusions, into the very face of the most unimaginable tions. We did not see horrors,—the same readiness as one finds in a compe- them as a debate which tent military commander. All this in a peculiarly Rus- either of us won or lost. sian manner. We saw them rather as a “I have tried to explain to myself these qualities of contribution to the larger the Russian intelligentsia, by trying to conceive of that victory which equally we awful sense of responsibility, before God and man, of hope to share.’ each one of a mere tiny handful of educated persons, “Vast and sudden amidst the sea of illiteracy and ignorance which was world-political changes Russia before the effects of the 1918 revolution. which few then foresaw “In any case, this is Stanislav Menshikov.” (LaRouche one of those few), have cleanly split Menshikov co-authored this Perestroika: Crossing Swords with Andropov the past 20-year period book with Galbraith, the and Gorbachov into two parts. And so, on former New Deal and JFK Menshikov continued to get into trouble, being advisor. Galbraith thought one level, the terms of Menshikov “a remarkably yanked from an official position on more than one occa- Galbraith’s and Menshi- informed scholar.” sion. In 1986, he was booted from the Communist Party kov’s 1987 exchange Central Committee staff, as he relates in his memoirs, might appear to be obsolete. What a surprise how very for crossing the interests of other officials. He worked current and relevant much of it is! Galbraith, for exam- at the Institute of the World Economy and International ple, noted there that the U.S. economy had had 25 good Relations (IMEMO), rising to the post of deputy direc- years from 1945 to 1970, but ‘the good fortune didn’t tor; at the Academy’s Novosibirsk outpost; and on the continue.’ He at first blamed this on the replacement of United Nations economics staff, overseeing Wassily his generation of economists by ‘a younger and less able Leontief’s project to model development processes generation,’ but then immediately turned around to try worldwide, in the 1970s.