About Anatoly Efimov

Anatoly N. Efimov was the first director of the Research and Development Institute under the USSR State Planning Committee. In this position he worked from August 11, 1955 to July 25, 1975. His efforts formed grounds for creation of school of economists who had a significant impact on economic science and practice of managing the national economy at the time when directive planning was the leading tool for managing the economy. It is important to emphasize his great role in organizing the development and implementation of a system of inter-sectorial balances in planning practice, in improving the methodology for developing five-year national economic plans and creating a methodology for long-term and medium-term socio-economic forecasting.

Anatoly N. Efimov was born in 1908 in the town of Troitsk, Orenburg province (now Chelyabinsk region), Russia. After graduating in 1937 from the Ural Polytechnic Institute named after S.M.Kirov (Sverdlovsk) he devoted about 10 years of his life to teaching, combining it with the academic activities, i.e. study of the industrial development of the Urals. After defending his Candidate thesis, he headed the economic research department of the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he launched work on the study of the productive forces and economy of the Ural economic region. During this period the researcher prepared a monograph outlining the concept of accelerating technical progress in the USSR, defended his doctoral thesis (1952), and received the title of professor (1953).

In 1955 Anatoly N. Efimov was invited to Moscow to head and organize the activities of the Research Economic Institute (REI) of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, one of the first scientific institutes created in the system of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. Today the Institute is known as the Institute for Macroeconomic Research and is one of the structural academic divisions of the Russian Foreign Trade Academy of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia. A.N. Efimov combined his work at the Research Economic Institute (1955-1975) with participation in the structures of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the UN (1958-1971), dealing with the development of interstate cooperation.

The main results of the scientific and organizational activities of A.N. Efimov are highly appreciated by the academic community and the state. In 1968, being a part of a group of scientists, he received a State Prize for research on the development of methods for analysis and planning of inter-sectoral relations and the sectoral structure of the national economy, the construction of planned and reporting inter-sectoral balances. Being a head of a reputable institute, A.N. Efimov demonstrated truly unique abilities to infect and captivate others with his enthusiasm, to create an atmosphere of creativity, unity and conviction in the high mission of the Research Economic Institute and involvement in solving the key tasks of the development of the domestic economy.

Today, his students and followers keep the memory with sincere love and respect for science and pass on knowledge and experience to a new generation of young scientists.