Eugen Samuilovich "Jenő" Varga (born as Eugen Weisz, November 6, 1879 in Budapest – October 7, 1964 in Moscow) was a Soviet economist of Hungarian origin. Biography Early years He was born as Jenő Weiß (Hungarian orthography: Weisz) in a poor Jewish family, as a child of Samuel Weisz - who was a teacher in the primary school of Nagytétény - and Julianna Singer. 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. 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. Hungarian revolution In February 1919, Varga joined the newly created Hungarian Communist Party. During the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, led by Béla Kun, he was People's Commissar for Finance, and then Chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy. After the overthrow of the Soviet Republic he fled to Vienna. Soviet emigration In 1920 he went to the Soviet Union with Arthur Holitscher. Here 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 1927-47, he was director of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics. In the 1930s he became an economic adviser to Joseph Stalin. He survived the purges of the 1930s, during which Bela Kun and other Hungarians were executed. 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. Personality In 1922, Alexander Barmine, a Soviet diplomat who later defected to the west, travelled by train to Moscow