Marshall I. Goldman, who diagnosed deficiencies in Moscow’s economic policies for decades and was among the first Kremlinologists to predict the downfall of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, died on Aug. 2 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.

The cause was complications of dementia, his son, Seth, said.

A perceptive economist, prolific author, professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and associate director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, Professor Goldman was an authority on the Soviet economy, methodically charting its downs (becoming an importer of grain) and potential ups (becoming an exporter of oil, before prices plunged, and of gas).

He pioneered scholarship on the environmental damage inflicted under Communist domination and the emergence of a post-Soviet economy driven by oil and gas production.

As early as 1987, he painted a grim picture of the consequences of perestroika and glasnost, the liberalization programs that Mr. Gorbachev had put in place. And, parting ways with most other Kremlinologists, he predicted that Mr. Gorbachev would not survive as Soviet leader for more than three more years. (He lasted until 1991, when the Soviet Union effectively collapsed.)