Alexander Gerschenkron (1904–1978)

Alexander Gerschenkron was Harvard’s economic historian in the third quarter of the twentieth century. His early life was dominated by twin experiences of traumatic displacement during the Russian Civil War and Anschluss. He came to the US as a research assistant, went to Washington as an expert on Germany and Austria, switching to Russian research as the Cold War developed. At Harvard, with his intellect and his encyclopaedic knowledge, he emerged as a “scholarly model”. Initially, Gerschenkron’s research focused on Soviet industrial production. His greatest contribution connected backwardness and industrialisation in nineteenth-century European industrialisation (Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective). He was a charismatic teacher who trained a generation of leaders in the “new economic history”.