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Jan Gotlib (Bogumił) Bloch (July 24, 1836, Radom – December 25, 1902/1901, Warsaw; (known in Russian as Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch)), was a Polish banker and railway financier who devoted his private life to the study of modern industrial warfare. Born Jewish and a convert to Calvinism, he spent considerable effort to opposing the prevalent Antisemitic polices of the Tsarist government, and was sympathetic to the fledgling Zionist Movement. Bloch had studied at the University of Berlin, worked at a Warsaw bank and then moved to St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire (which governed much of the Polish lands at the time). There, he took part in the development of the Russian Railways, both in financing the construction of new railways and in writing
research papers on the subject. He founded several banking, credit and
insurance companies. In 1877 he was appointed a member of the Russian
Finance Ministry's Scientific Committee. Bloch was intrigued by the devastating victory of Prussia/Germany over France in
1870, which suggested to him that the solution of diplomatic problems
by warfare had become obsolete in Europe. He published his six volume
master work, Budushchaya Voina, popularized in English translation as Is War Now Impossible?, in Paris in 1898. His mainly detailed analysis of modern warfare, its tactical, strategic and political implications, was widely read in Europe. Bloch argued that: Bloch attended the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, possibly at the invitation of Tsar Nicholas II,
and distributed copies of his work to delegates from the diplomatic
missions of 26 states, to little avail. The British publicist W.T. Stead also
worked to spread Bloch's insights. In each particular, Bloch's
theoretical research was rejected or ignored. To the British readers of The Contemporary Review, Bloch wrote in 1901: Europe's patriots were unmoved. French cavalry and British infantry commanders only learned Bloch's lessons by a process of trial and error once Bloch's impossible war, World War I,
had begun. The Russian and German monarchies proved equally incapable
of assimilating Bloch's cautionary words concerning revolution, paying
the price with summary execution and exile, respectively. Bloch's
foresight is somewhat qualified by what proved an underestimation of
the tactical and strategic significance of indirect (e.g., artillery) fire, and his failure to foresee the development of the armoured tank and military aircraft.
Bloch also did not realise the potential of non - rail motor transport.
None of these oversights was significant enough to undermine his
broadest observations, however, for the period before about 1930. An International Museum of War and Peace was established at Lucerne, Switzerland, in Bloch's name in 1902. According to peacemuseums.org, it was destroyed in one of the subsequent world wars, despite Switzerland's neutrality. Bloch
survived long enough after publishing his theory to turn his analytical
talents to investigating the institutional barriers which prevented the
theory's adoption by the military establishment. He appears to have concluded that the military had to be sidestepped, by a more direct appeal to voters. Contemporary theory treats Bloch as the Anti - Clausewitz of the early 1900s. A review in 2000 in the journal War in History concentrates on the interaction between Bloch's theory and the military
professionals of the time. In short, it finds that they tended to
dismiss Bloch, on the basis that, while his "mathematics" might be
correct, his overall message ran the risk of being bad for morale. Bloch converted to Calvinism, the religion of a small minority in the Russian Empire. In this way he was able to avoid the legal disabilities imposed on Jews under Tsarist rule, especially the geographical limitation to the Pale of Settlement,
banning Jews from living in the Empire's main cites - without needing
to regularly attend a church and be visibly practising Christianity. As
became evident especially in the later part of his life, he retained a
strong concern for the situation of the Jews, even if formally no
longer one of them. Following the wave of pogroms of the 1880s and the early 1890s, a commission headed by the vociferously antisemitic Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve recommended
a further worsening of the Jews' legal position. In response, Bloch
sent to the government a series of well reasoned memoranda calling for
an end to the discrimination of the Jews. Bloch
also embarked upon an extensive research on the social and economic
conditions of the Russian Empire's Jewish subjects. For that purpose,
he established a team of scientific researchers headed by the Russian
economist A.P. Subotin, on whose work he spent hundreds of thousands of rubles. The
result, completed only in 1901 - one year before Bloch's death - was a
five volume work entitled "Comparison of the material and moral levels
in the Western Great - Russian and Polish Regions". On the basis of
extensive statistical data, compiled mainly in the Pale of Settlement,
there was given a
comprehensive account of the Jewish role in the Empire's economic life,
in crafts, trade and industry. The study showed that the Jews were a
boon to the Russian economy - rather than damaging and threatening it,
as was at the time regularly claimed by anti - semites. Bloch's great effort was, however, in vain. The Russian Council of Ministers banned the work, and nearly all copies were confiscated and burned.
Only a few surviving copies remained in circulation, as great rarities.
Subotin was, however, later able to publish a summary entitled "The
Jewish Question in the Right Light". Since 1897, Bloch became involved with Zionist activities in Russia, and became friendly with Theodor Herzl. In June 1899 Herzl arrived at the Hague Peace Conference in
an effort to gain an audience with the Tsar, for which purpose he met
with Bloch as with other people having access to higher echelons of the
Russian government. Bloch supported Herzl's efforts and telegraphed a
memorandum of recommendation to the Tsar via Baron de Staal. Bloch
noted that Herzl had been active in promoting the Hague Conference's aims
of international peace, and that among other things he had sent a
letter to Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, calling for a change in Germany's position on the issue of international arbitration. In
June 1899 Bloch, at Herzl's request, lobbied the Russian government to
lift a ban on the sale in its territory of shares of the Zionist Jewish Colonial Trust (predecessor of the present Israeli National Bank). |