Dzhermen Mikhailovich Gvishiani (24 December 1928,

Akhaltsikhe Akhaltsikhe ( ka, ახალციხე ), formerly known as Lomsia ( ka, ლომსია ), is a small city in Georgia's southwestern region () of Samtskhe–Javakheti. It is the administrative center of the Akhaltsikhe Municipality and ...

– 18 May 2003,

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

) was a Soviet and Russian philosopher, sociologist, management theorist and scientific administrator.

Early life and family

Dzhermen Gvishiani was born the son of Mikhail Maksimovich Gvishiani, a Georgian and an Armenian mother. His forename was composed of the first part of

Felix Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (; ; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed Iron Felix (), was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka a ...

's surname (Dzher) followed by the first part of Vyacheslav Menzhinsky's surname (men). Both were former chairmen of the

Joint State Political Directorate The Joint State Political Directorate ( rus, Объединённое государственное политическое управление, p=ɐbjɪdʲɪˈnʲɵn(ː)əjə ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əjə pəlʲɪˈtʲitɕɪskəjə ʊprɐˈv ...

(OGPU) for whom his father worked. In 1948 he married Lyudmila Gvishiani (Kosygina), a librarian and the only daughter of the Soviet Prime Minister (by 1948 - Minister of Finances)

Alexei Kosygin Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (–18 December 1980) was a Soviet people, Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980 and, alongside General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, was one of its most ...

. His son, Alexei Gvishiani, is a prominent Russian geoinformatics scientist. Granddaughter, Ekaterina Semenikhina, art collector and

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

honorary consul A consul is an official representative of a government who resides in a foreign country to assist and protect citizens of the consul's country, and to promote and facilitate commercial and diplomatic relations between the two countries. A consu ...

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Career

Gvishiani graduated from the

Moscow State Institute of International Relations Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) (, also known as MGIMO University) is an higher education, institute of higher education located in Moscow, Russia. The institute is run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia), Russian ...

in 1951 and became a member of the Communist Party in the same year. He also joined the

Soviet Navy The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...

that year, serving until 1955. Then he started work for the State Committee for New Technology. However, when the organisation was superseded by the

State Committee for Science and Technology The State Committee for Science and Technology (Gosudarstvennyi Komitet po Nauke i Tekhnike—GKNT) was an influential committee established in the Soviet Union in 1965. It took over from the State Committee for the Introduction of New Technologies ...

in 1965, he was appointed Deputy Chairman under

Vladimir Kirillin Vladimir Alekseyevich Kirillin (; – 29 January 1999) was a Soviet physicist specializing in energetics and thermophysics and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, as well as a Soviet party official. After graduating fro ...

. Member of the

Club of Rome The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing list of global issues, global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in R ...

, co-founder of the

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an independent International research institute located in Laxenburg, near Vienna in Austria, founded as an East-West scientific cooperation initiative during the Cold War. Th ...

and head of its Soviet branch, Institute for Systems Analysis of the

Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (un ...

, known for its free-thinking atmosphere unusual in the heavily ideologized Soviet environment that was essential to develop a market-oriented programme of further reforms of the Soviet economy. In the 1980s he served as the deputy head of Soviet

Gosplan The State Planning Committee, commonly known as Gosplan ( ), was the agency responsible for economic planning, central economic planning in the Soviet Union. Established in 1921 and remaining in existence until the dissolution of the Soviet Unio ...

. Gvishiani was a member of the United Nations Advisory Committee on Science and Technology (ACAST) since its inception in 1964.

Publications

* ''Organisation and management;: A sociological analysis of Western theories'' (1972) Moscow: Progress Publishers * ''Systems Research: Methodological Problems'' (1984) Oxford: Pergamon Press

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gvishiani, Dzhermen 1928 births 2003 deaths 20th-century Russian philosophers People from Akhaltsikhe Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences Moscow State Institute of International Relations alumni Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Recipients of the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR Russian sociologists Soviet philosophers Soviet sociologists Burials in Troyekurovskoye Cemetery