Anita Prazmowska (History, LSE)
Oskar Lange – a multifaceted biography
Economists know Professor Oskar Lange for his advocacy of state sponsored industrialisation, in particular through pricing mechanisms.
To historians, Lange is a player in what a difficult relationship between the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. While an economics professor at Chicago University he made a trip the Soviet Union where in April 1944 he had a meeting with Stalin. Subsequently Lange associated himself with the Soviet sponsored Polish Lublin government. His political and professional career was connected with the Soviet regime in Poland. After 1956 his economic expertise rather than his war time trip to meet Stalin was stressed.
Since then a number of historians from in the United States and Poland have suggested that there is irrefutable evidence that Lange’s was a Soviet agent during the war. Thus Lange ceased being an economist or even a minor intermediary between the Roosevelt administration and Stalin and, in those interpretations, became a traitor.
This begs the question whether Lange was part of a larger Soviet conspiracy. The possibility which is not considered is that he might have been an agent of US policy, in particular in President Roosevelt’s desperate bid to gain Stalin’s support at a time of military need. The answer to these imponderables should in principle emerge from the study of documentary evidence. But at this point one has to remember that documents are created with a specific purpose and by people whose actions are determined the need to resolve towards events facing them.
We have access to archives which offer information on Lange. These are documents from the Government in exile archives, Polish state archives, archives of the Socialist Party for the period 1945-47 and finally the FBI archives for the period 1941-62. All present a very different image of the otherwise rather pedestrian man and an inspirational economist. His visit to the USSR created a new persona and with very different interpretations of who he was.
Anita J Pra?mowska, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics has published books on Polish foreign policy before and during the Second World War. Her publications include Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939 (CUP), Britain and Poland1939-1943 (CUP) and Civil War in Poland, 1941-1948 (Palgrave/Macmillan). She is presently working on the biography of W?adys?aw Gomu?ka for I.B. Tauris.
To historians, Lange is a player in what a difficult relationship between the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. While an economics professor at Chicago University he made a trip the Soviet Union where in April 1944 he had a meeting with Stalin. Subsequently Lange associated himself with the Soviet sponsored Polish Lublin government. His political and professional career was connected with the Soviet regime in Poland. After 1956 his economic expertise rather than his war time trip to meet Stalin was stressed.
Since then a number of historians from in the United States and Poland have suggested that there is irrefutable evidence that Lange’s was a Soviet agent during the war. Thus Lange ceased being an economist or even a minor intermediary between the Roosevelt administration and Stalin and, in those interpretations, became a traitor.
This begs the question whether Lange was part of a larger Soviet conspiracy. The possibility which is not considered is that he might have been an agent of US policy, in particular in President Roosevelt’s desperate bid to gain Stalin’s support at a time of military need. The answer to these imponderables should in principle emerge from the study of documentary evidence. But at this point one has to remember that documents are created with a specific purpose and by people whose actions are determined the need to resolve towards events facing them.
We have access to archives which offer information on Lange. These are documents from the Government in exile archives, Polish state archives, archives of the Socialist Party for the period 1945-47 and finally the FBI archives for the period 1941-62. All present a very different image of the otherwise rather pedestrian man and an inspirational economist. His visit to the USSR created a new persona and with very different interpretations of who he was.
Anita J Pra?mowska, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics has published books on Polish foreign policy before and during the Second World War. Her publications include Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939 (CUP), Britain and Poland1939-1943 (CUP) and Civil War in Poland, 1941-1948 (Palgrave/Macmillan). She is presently working on the biography of W?adys?aw Gomu?ka for I.B. Tauris.
