Eugen Varga

Eugen Samuilovich "Jenő" Varga (November 6, 1879, Budapest – October 7, 1964, Moscow) was a Marxian economist of Hungarian origin.

Eugen "Jenő" Varga studied philosophy and economic geography at the University of Budapest. In 1906, he started writing in socialist and academic journals, mainly on economic subjects, but also on other topics. Before World War I he gained some fame by discussing with Otto Bauer about the origins of inflation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this period he belonged to the Marxist Centrists, of whom Karl Kautsky and Rudolf Hilferding were the most prominent spokesmen.

He participated as minister of finance in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. After the overthrow of the Soviet Republic he fled to Vienna.

In 1920 he went to the Soviet Union, where he started working for the Comintern, specializing in international economic problems and agrarian questions. In years 1922-1927 he was working at the department of trade in the Soviet embassy in Berlin. In the 1930s he became an economic adviser to Joseph Stalin. He survived the purges of the 1930s.

During World War II he advised the Soviet Government in matters of post-war reparations. He attended the Potsdam Conference of 1945 as an expert. Like most of his compatriots living and working in Moscow, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but he also remained active in the Hungarian Communist Party.

He authored the economic reports the congresses of the Comintern discussed between 1921 and 1935. A large number of his writings were studies of the international economic conjuncture, in which he made great effort to assess quantitative trends in output, investment and employment using official economic data from numerous countries. He also extensively studied German imperialism.

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