A Happy Choice for the Rest of the Life! In Memory of Aleksandr Petrovich Bychko, an Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, Honorary Citizen of Tomsk, Honored Professor of Tomsk State University

The article is dedicated to the memory of Aleksandr Petrovich Bychkov, an Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, Honorary Citizen of Tomsk, Honored Professor of Tomsk State University (TSU). In the first 10 years of service at Tomsk State University, Bychkov made a career from an assistant professor to a university rector, heading TSU in 1967 and leaving this post 16 years later, in 1983. Defending his doctoral dissertation in 1966, Bychkov became the first Doctor of Economics in Tomsk after the Revolution and was elected head of the Department of Political Economy at TSU. Understanding the importance and necessity of developing economic education in Siberia, Bychkov made great efforts to open a new specialty – political economy – at TSU. On Bychkov’s initiative, an economic laboratory was opened at TSU. In 1969, the Academic Council for the defense of candidate and doctoral dissertations in economic, philosophical, and legal sciences was opened at Tomsk State University, and Bychkov became the chairman of the council. In fact, TSU became a basic university in the formation of scientific, methodological, organizational, and informational work in the field of economic education in entire Western and Eastern Siberia. Bychkov’s main areas of research were property relations, the economic foundations of federalism in Russia. In the economic literature at that time there were lively discussions on the effectiveness of management, material incentives and planning in the socialist economy. There were not only discussions, but also numerous reforms and reorganizations in the economic life of the country, which affected the development of the economy, had an impact on the quality of the social life of society, on the development of science and education. The initiated reform was the development of an initiative to improve economic activity at enterprises through the active involvement of scientific and educational institutions. Along with scientific, educational and methodological work, he organized social and educational work to disseminate knowledge, increase economic literacy among the population of the region. In 1974 Bychkov headed the Socioeconomic Problems of the Development of Siberia and the Far East Problem Council of the Ministry of Higher Education of the RSFS. In the 1970s–1980s he headed the West Siberian sector for organizing students’ research work. The article discusses the main milestones in the life of Aleksandr Bychkov. The significance of his methodological and leadership activities related to the formation and development of economic education in Tomsk and in Siberia in general is investigated; the directions of scientific activity are analyzed; the role in the formation of his own scientific school and the relationship of the investigated problems with the contemporary urgent tasks of economic science and education in Russia are shown. The entire period of Bychkov’s work in Tomsk as an associate professor, professor, head of department and rector of Tomsk State University can be considered a period of the formation, growth and qualitative development of economic education and science not only at TSU, but throughout Siberia. Today, a large number of his students and followers head departments of the economic profile and institutes of almost all Siberian universities.