Yury Vasilevich Yaremenko (Юрий Васильевич Ярёменко) (1935 August 8 -1996 September 18) was an outstanding Soviet and Russian economist, member of the Academy of Sciences (from 1994) and Director of the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Academy. He was especially noted for his work in multisectoral (input-output) economics and for his concept of the multi-level economy, a description of how the planned economy of the Soviet Union actually worked. Youth and Education He was born in Chita in eastern Siberia, 300 miles east of Lake Baikal and 100 miles north of China. His father worked in a repair shop for railroad cars. This work would have exempted him from military service in World War II, but he chose to enlist and served in a tank crew. After the war, he was stationed in Germany for two years, where he was joined by his wife, ten-year-old Yuri, and a younger sister. After two years, they returned to the Ukraine. From there Yuri was able to enter Moscow State University in 1953. From his first year, he began to study Chinese and the economy of China. After graduation, he was sent in November 1957 to study economics at the People's University in Beijing. He graduated there in 1960 and returned to Moscow at just the moment when relations between China and the Soviet Union dramatically worsened. Despite his exceptional knowledge of Chinese institutions and language, he could find no appropriate work that used them. Nevertheless, during the rest of his life, he followed events in China closely, wrote about them, and taught courses on the economy of China at Moscow State University. Professional Career After six months as a translator for Intourist, he accepted a job in the newly organized Economic Research Institute (НИЭИ) in Gosplan. the State Planning Commission. There he came to recognize the importance of forecasting and envisioning of the future. In 1973, he and several other members of this Institute moved to the Central Economic-Mathematical Institute (ЦЭМИ) of the Academy of Sciences, where he was a deputy director and head of a laboratory. In 1985, he became a Deputy Director of the newly organized Institute of Economic Forecasting in the Academy of Sciences. Following the death in 1987 of the founding director of this Institute, A. I. Anchishkin, Yaremenko became its director and served in this capacity until his sudden death of a heart attack that began