Rubin Isaak Ilyich (1886, Dinaburg, now Daugavpils, Latvia — 1937, Aktobe, Kazakhstan) — Soviet economist. He was born into the family of a house owner who held the status of hereditary honorary citizen. He received a traditional Jewish education in a ḥeder, graduated from a classical gymnasium in Vitebsk, and from the Faculty of Law of St Petersburg University (1910).
In his youth he became interested in Marxism and in 1904 joined the Bund, remaining faithful to these convictions throughout his life. Before the Revolution of 1917 Rubin worked as a sworn attorney (from 1912 in Moscow) and published articles on civil law; in 1915–1917 he served as secretary of the Union of Cities and the Zemstvo Union.
After the October Revolution of 1917 he published dozens of articles and brochures on labour legislation, economics, and social insurance. Invited by David Ryazanov to assist with translations of the economic writings of Karl Marx, Rubin soon became one of the leading Soviet Marx scholars and perhaps the most authoritative specialist in Marxist political economy after Nikolai Bukharin.
From 1921 Rubin was professor at Moscow University and several other major Moscow institutions of higher education. He was widely recognised as an interpreter of Marx’s economic doctrine and its categories and authored numerous articles, reviews, and book notices on economic questions, as well as translations of works by foreign economists. His book Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value went through four editions by 1930, and his textbook History of Economic Thought was reissued annually.
Rubin’s reputation as an indispensable specialist initially helped him when, beginning in February 1921, he came under repression as a member and secretary of the Central Committee of the right wing of the Bund, which at the organisation’s 12th conference in 1920 had refused to merge with the RCP(b). Several times he was released from imprisonment through the petitions of prominent Bolsheviks such as Anatoly Lunacharsky, Nikolai Krestinsky, and historians-academicians David Ryazanov, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Vladimir Volgin, and others. During his imprisonment he was even allowed to continue scholarly work, including research on the still unpublished Essays on Marx’s Theory of Money.
However, during the discussion that began in 1928 around Rubin’s book Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, political accusations were raised against him (falsification of Marxist economic theory, an idealist and metaphysical approach to economic categories, separation of form from content, etc.), and a campaign against so-called “Rubinism” was launched. At that point no one dared defend him.
In November 1930 the newspaper Pravda denounced Rubin as a participant in an exposed Menshevik–kulak sabotage organisation. At the end of December he was arrested; under torture he confessed to belonging to the Menshevik centre and, at the trial of the so-called Union Bureau of the Mensheviks (1931), was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, which in 1933 was commuted to exile in Kazakhstan.
In November 1937 in Aktobe he was arrested again on charges of organising a counter-revolutionary organisation. A few days later he was sentenced to death by a troika and executed the following day.
In 1989–1991 Rubin was fully rehabilitated on all charges ever brought against him.