Taras Muranivsky
Has Passed On

We remember Taras's patient attempts to teach blockheaded Congressmen, parliamentarians, and officials in the West, the deadly folly of their forcing neo-liberal economics on Russia and Eastern Europe. We remember one of his first public interventions abroad, a letter to the editor published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on March 16, 1993, in which Prof. Muranivsky succinctly demonstrated that the International Monetary Fund's "shock therapy" then being imposed on Russia was "medicine which kills the patient," and he counterposed to "this immoral and discriminatory policy, [which] strikes back like a boomerang against the states that follow it," an alternative: the "Productive Triangle" infrastructure and industrial development plan, initiated by Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute.

Taras did much--very much--to teach our members and associates about Russia in the tumultuous early 1990's. And, we remember his coming all the way from Moscow to Rochester, Minnesota, to visit Lyndon LaRouche in prison, in May 1993. Taras later recalled his "genuine creative and intellectual satisfaction from our multifaceted, extremely productive conversation, which lasted almost seven hours, but seemed to go by in one minute," and which Taras published in full in Russian, * as the first Bulletin of the Moscow Schiller Institute (No. 3) to be issued under his editorship.

Every one of us could learn from Taras. We roared at his jokes, and we were inspired by the humor and ebullience with which he took up the challenge of a new idea--especially one that challenged strongly held assumptions. Taras Vasilyevich was a Professor of Informatics when he encountered the Schiller Institute. In November 1992, speaking to the Schiller Institute's first-ever public conference in Moscow, on the topic of LaRouche's book So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics?, he cited LaRouche's attack on the principles of econometrics, operations research, and systems analysis as "consistent failures," and said, "I am not prepared to accept this conclusion 'on faith.' " He wanted to fight new ideas through, making them his own. He derived the greatest joy from thinking. In September 1997, writing for LaRouche's 75th birthday Festschrift, Taras let us know that this was the most important for him:

"My sincere respect for you, dear Lyn, is rooted in at least two things: first, that in your scientific findings I have encountered a full affirmation of many of my own aspirations and researches, which differ in a cardinal way from generally accepted views; second, that you have inspired me to think through, and in a number of instances to rethink and revise, some of my previous scientific concepts and judgments. That is, most likely, the main reason for my extremely high estimation of your virtues as a major scientist and thinker. In that regard, dear Lyn, I consider you to be my Teacher, despite the fact that at the time I met you, I was already 'wreathed' with scholarly degrees and scientific titles. I am also convinced that certain of today's well-known authorities, whether in the U.S.A. or in Russia, would do well to acknowledge their own errors honestly, in the light of your theoretical concepts in science, and to accept those truths for which you, esteemed Lyn, have provided the scientific grounding. If we professors and academicians, above all, learn to shed our cocoon of false 'psychological snobbery,' science will only gain."

It was not from a soft life that Taras Vasilyevich came by his courage to change axioms. The moral and intellectual passion which we cherished in him, was forged during his childhood and youth in Ukraine during World War II and postwar reconstruction, and in Moscow, where he came as a student. Taras had, and suffered consequences for having, that quality of "dissidence," born of love of humanity and intolerance for lying, which LaRouche discerned in the best Soviet scientists, and wrote about in "Russia's Relation to Universal History."

At one time, Prof. Muranivsky worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada. In the 1990's, he taught at the Russian State University for the Humanities. He had the Kandidat degree in economics (1970) and his doctorate in philosophical sciences (1988). Working in the Schiller Institute, Prof. Muranivsky was the scientific editor of the two LaRouche books published in Russian translation (So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics?, 1992; Physical Economy, 1997). He edited Moscow Schiller Institute Bulletins Nos. 3-9.

In May of this year, Prof. Muranivsky took part in the historic international conference of the Schiller Institute in Bad Schwalbach, Germany. His exchange with LaRouche during its plenary session on science, may be read on page - of this issue of Fidelio. Upon his return to Moscow, he took the message of the Bad Schwalbach conference, on the New Bretton Woods, to 100 leading Russian academicians and other economists, at a June 5 seminar at the Academy of Sciences. Taras then worked tirelessly, to edit and improve the translation of LaRouche's Bad Schwalbach keynote, and to shepherd it through publication in Russian, as the main contents of Moscow Schiller Institute Bulletin No. 9. On July 11, he let us know by e-mail: "Dear Friends, BULLETIN #9 IS PUBLISHED!"

Taras Vasilyevich is survived by his wife, Lionella Sergeyevna Vladimirova, his son, three daughters, and their families, to whom we convey our deepest condolences. His funeral took place Thursday, July 20. Today, we can say to our beloved, unforgettable, and irreplaceable Taras, in some old Russian phrases: Dear friend, we shall never forget you. May the earth be as soft as goose-down where you lie, while your memory lives in our hearts, as long as we shall live.

Note: Karl-Michael Vitt, Jonathan Tennenbaum, Michele Steinberg, and others, contributed to these remembrances. (RBD)

* Excerpted in "LaRouche in Dialogue with the Intelligentsia of Russia,"
Fidelio, Spring 1994 (Vol. III, No. 1).
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