The beginning of the twentieth century, when revolutionary sentiment was raging in Russia, created a breeding ground for people of an adventurous disposition of character and occupation. Such an unusual person as Ulitsky Yakov Samoilovich fell into this cohort. In historical reports, he is better known as an economist, demographer, and statistician.
Biography
The future Soviet scientist was born at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1891, on April 8, in the small town of Rzhishchev, Kiev province.
A wealthy Jewish family, in which Jacob was born, did not know the troubles and difficulties, since the father of the family, Shmil Ioselevich, had his own flour mill and leased river barges. In those years, it was not accepted that women work, so Sophia, the mother of six children, the eldest of whom was Jacob, was engaged only in household work and children.
Education
At school, Jacob showed a variety of talents. He was the editor of the school hectographic magazine, was fond of music and choral singing. At the same time, Jacob always liked to immerse himself in the study of those subjects with which his inquiring mind was engaged. When he graduated from the Kiev Commercial Institute in 1914, he was attracted to musicology and conducting art. Along with the study of the theory and history of music, the young scientist writes his first monograph on the organization of production processes. Scientific works were temporarily interrupted - Jacob Ulitsky was drafted into the army. It was a revolutionary year 1917.
Revolutionary creativity
Ulitsky’s career went uphill. He was at the very peak of the revolution and got a job at the People’s Commissariat of Labor in Kiev. The political views of Jacob Ulitsky belonged to the Menshevik trend. He actively participated in the activities of the Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik organizations of Ukraine. In 1919, a wave of Jewish pogroms swept across Ukraine, in which the Ulitsky family suffered as well - brother Lazar was killed. Due to the unfavorable situation, Yakov Ulitsky goes to Moscow, where he finds a job in the People’s Commissariat of Post and Telegraph. He is engaged in research of statistics and management theory, often published in economic journals. He developed his own view on management theory, he was close to the social and labor concept of the principles of the organization of the labor process.
In the thirties, party purges began in organizations and Yakov Ulitsky, as a former Menshevik, was arrested and deported from the capital of the USSR. He was sent to Stalingrad, where he worked at a tractor factory. Jacob was not discouraged, and even in exile was engaged in his favorite business - he created an orchestra and a choir of factory workers at the plant. Inexorable was his fate. For participation in Trotskyist organizations, Yakov Ulitsky received a second punishment and was sent to Biysk. Here he had to work in different guises - an accountant, a taper, a teacher of foreign languages. The young scientist did not lose heart in exile. When the term of imprisonment ended, Jacob returned to Moscow and seriously engaged in science. His choice fell on demographic statistics. It was a good choice - in the year the war ends, the scientist passes the candidate minimum, and then successfully defends the candidate. The place of work of Ulitsky was Correspondence Financial Institute.
The explosive energy of Ulitsky served him poorly. His interest in Zionism led to a new arrest and exile to Kalinin.
