ABSTRACT
The Russian synthesis was a peculiar understanding of the relations between value and prices between 1890 and 1920 in Russia. This includes all the attempts at synthesis between classical political economy and marginalism, the labour theory of value and marginal utility, and value and prices. The primary function of a theory of prices is to explain an exchange ratio. The theory of value plays a central role in Marx's overall critique of political economy and of the understanding of the workings of a society characterised by a capitalist mode of production. Political economy was institutionalised early in Russia, which did not mean that it was independent from political authorities. In the middle of the 1890s, however, some schisms appeared in Russian Marxism. 'Legal Marxists', inspired by the German neo-Kantian philosophical current, proposed to revise Marx's doctrine, especially his materialist philosophy and theory of value.
