Mariya Vernadskaya
Mariya Nikolaevna Vernadskaya (née Shigaeva, 1831–1860) was a Russian economist who championed women entering the workforce. She is often cited as the first Russian woman political economist.[1][2][3]
She was born on 27 December 1831, in St Petersberg to government official Nikolai Petrovich Shigaev. Her mother died when she was young, and she was educated at home.[3]
In 1850, she married professor and economist I. V. Vernadsky. They had a son, Nikolai.[4]
Mariya began studying economics and made several translations of economic works into Russian. From 1857, Mariya and her husband co-edited a liberal journal, The Economic Index.[1]
In the 1850s, Mariya wrote about 25 articles and 80 book reviews in the field of economics, many of them in her own journal.[5][6] She was in favour of liberating serfs without land and of the independence that could come to women entering the workforce.[1] Her articles, which sometimes took unconventional, short-story like formats, encouraged women not to see employment as shameful.[5][7]
She died of tuberculosis in 1860, after which her husband published her collected writings in 1862.[4]
References
- 1 2 3 Stites, Richard (2021-07-13). The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilsm, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 - Expanded Edition. Princeton University Press. pp. 35–7. ISBN 978-1-4008-4327-5.
- ↑ Bochko, Vladimir S. (2024-09-30). "Vernadskaya Maria Nikolaevna: the first female political economist in Russia". History and Modern Perspectives. 6 (3): 136–146. doi:10.33693/2658-4654-2024-6-3-136-146. ISSN 2713-2579.
- 1 2 Anikin, Andreĭ Vladimirovich (1988). Russian Thinkers: Essays on Socio-economic Thought in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Progress Publishers. pp. 155–6. ISBN 978-5-01-000515-3.
- 1 2 "Русские писатели. 1800—1917. Том 1 : Биографический словарь. 1989". imwerden.de (in Russian). Retrieved 2025-12-17.
- 1 2 Rosenholm, Aria (2001), "Mariya Vernadskaya: Missionary of 'Scientific Femininity'", in Edmondson, Linda (ed.), Gender in Russian History and Culture, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 73–92, doi:10.1057/9780230518926_4, ISBN 978-0-230-51892-6, retrieved 2025-12-17
- ↑ Fuchs, Rachel; Thompson, Victoria E. (2004-11-21). Women in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 167–8. ISBN 978-0-230-80216-2.
- ↑ Broido, Vera (1977). Apostles Into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. Viking Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-670-12961-4.