Werner Sombart in Russland. Ein vergessenes Kapitel seiner Lebens- und Wirkungsgeschichte by Joachim s> Zweynert Daniel Riniker (review)

REVIEWS 159 In such a miscellanythe declaredcommon theme of Hungarians'capacityfor survival,in an often hostile world, is not always obvious, but two things that shine through in all the pieces under review are Kiraly's simple patriotism, and his at times naive readiness to attributethe best of motives to his fellow Hungarians in their relationship with the peoples around them. This Panglossianundertoneis most evidentin the articleson issuesof confederation and Danubian cooperation, as well as in those celebrating there is no other word possible the 'enduringfriendship'of Poles and Hungarians.In some of the earliest articles the author's limited command of English is still apparent,and he has not been well servedby his editors,who have let numerous typographicalerrors slip through. However, the majority of the articles are of continuing interest and importance. Those on the Polish-Hungarian symbiosis, for instance, highlight the extent to which both Polish and Hungarian gentry assumed, following Galicia's annexation by the Habsburg Monarchy in I772, that the province rightfully ought to be incorporated within the Kingdom of Hungary. This assumption, which Francis I was minded to accept, was not abandoned until I830, when the Polishinsurrection of that year turned the Galician Poles northwards,and drove Habsburgsand Romanovs closer together. The articleson land reformand the peasantryare uniformlypacked with useful information, and reflect the research that went into Kiraly'sHungagy in theLateEighteenth Centugy (New York, I969), as well as his biographyof Ferenc Deak (Boston,MA, 1975),a vocal advocate of peasant emancipation from the very start of his parliamentarycareer. An article on peasant movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is particularly informativeon the difficultyof startinggenuine peasant parties in Hungary's restrictivepolitical system, despite the very real grievancesand lively political consciousness of peasants as a whole. All in all, the republication of these articlesis welcome, and makes a fittingtribute to Kiraly'spersonal sacrifices, as well as his lifelong commitment to the study of his country'shistory. Grant MacEwanCollege, Edmonton IAND. ARMOUR Zweynert, Joachim and Riniker, Daniel. WernerSombartin Russland.Ein vergessenes Kapitel seiner Lebens- und Wirkungsgeschichte. Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigenOkonomie, I9. Metropolis, Marburg, 2004. I58 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.?22.8o. THIS short book, one in a seriesof studiesin the historyof German economic thought, opens with a photograph from Zhivoeslovoof the once illustrious economist Werner Sombart (I863-I941) during the month-long lecture tour he made in Russia during the springof 1914. The authorsbelong to a team of scholars who are re-examining the German-Russian social scientific nexus during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Future work is promised on figures such as Tugan Baranovskii,Mendeleev, Kulischer, von Storch and Weber. This book, which is a successorto Zweynert'smuch more substantial monograph, Eine Geschichte des okonomischen Denkensin Russland,I805-I905 (Marburg,2002), has brief chapterson Sombart'splace in the intense Russian i6o SEER, 85, I, 2007 debates on capitalism in the I89os, on his significance for young economic historianssuch as Petr Liashchenko,and on his visit to Russia. It also includes the texts of his articlesand the interviewshe gave on the occasion of his first and only visit to Russia. By the time he had reached forty, Sombarthad alreadypublished substantial studies on socialistthought and social movements, on German economic development and on modern capitalism. (Moderne Kapitalismus, a work that coined the term 'capitalism',has never been translatedinto English.)He had begun to develop an interest in the history of consumption and leisure. According to the authors, he was already well known to a Russian audience by virtueof the relaxationof censorshipin Russiain 1905-07, which permitted the translationof his book on the 'Jewishcontribution'to economic development . His views on modernization and 'culturalprogress'gained an enthusiastic reception among Russian liberals, although radical social democrats questionedhis shiftfrom a purelyMarxistto what the authorshere describeas a more 'romantic'anti-capitaliststance, founded upon a belief that capitalism had produced a 'fragmented'society. One of his Russianreaders,perhapsnot unfairly, criticized Sombart on the grounds that he failed to clarify for his readerswhich of the many mono-causal explanationshe had proposedfor the development of capitalism,Jews, war, love or luxury, was decisive. Sombart's works are now largely ignored except by specialists and it is unlikelythat this book will remedy this state...

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.