Eugene M. Kulischer (1881-1956) was a Russian American sociologist, an authority on
demographyDemography is the statistical study of all populations. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
, migration, and manpower, and an expert on Russia. Kulischer coined the phrase “displaced persons” and was among the first to seek to document the number of persons lost in the Holocaust as well as the subsequent relocation of millions of Europeans after WWII.
Born in
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
in 1881 he died in Washington D.C, on April 2, 1956.
Eugene M. Kulischer (1881-1956) was a Russian American sociologist, an authority on
demographyDemography is the statistical study of all populations. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
, migration, and manpower, and an expert on Russia. Kulischer coined the phrase “displaced persons” and was among the first to seek to document the number of persons lost in the Holocaust as well as the subsequent relocation of millions of Europeans after WWII.
Biography
Born in
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
in 1881 he died in Washington D.C, on April 2, 1956. Like his father, Michael Kulischer a noted Russian historian, he insisted that no migration occurs in isolation. Along with his brother Alexander, he worked on
Kriegs-und Wanderzüge, Weltgeschichte als Võlkerbewegung (War and Migration; World History as Peoples' Movements), (Berlin-Leipzig, Walter de Gruyter, 1932) and
Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947. They were intended to show that migrations and wars go hand-in-hand.
In a way, Kulischer was himself an example of a displaced person. Following the Russian Revolution (1917), he fled Russia for
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
in 1920. Following the collapse of the
Weimar RepublicThe Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government, named after Weimar, the place where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was still Deutsches Reich , however...
, he fled Germany for
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
. In 1936 he went to
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. In 1941 — at the age of 60 — Kulischer "crossed clandestinely the demarcation line between the occupied and the unoccupied parts of
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
" and went to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
; his brother Alexander, "when crossing the demarcation line, was arrested by Pétain's gendarmes and died in a concentration camp.”
Work
In the United States Kulischer “served successively as consultant or staff member of the International Labor Office, the Office of strategic Services, the Bureau of the Census, the Department of the Army, and the
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books. The head...
. His major works include
The Displacement of Population in Europe (Montreal, 1943), and
Europe on the Move (New York, 1948)” . At the heart of Kulischer's work is a simple axiom: individual short-distance movements in their combined action create great population shifts . An expansion of that concept is his oft quoted dictum:
“The migratory movement is at once perpetual, partial, and universal. It never ceases, it affects every people, but at a given moment it sets in motion only a small number of each population; hence the illusion of immobility. In fact, there is never a moment of immobility for any people, because no migration remains isolated” .
With that paragraph Kulischer created a bridge linking the migration of individuals and the demographic fact of great migrations. Kulischer and his brother, along with millions of others, tried to put
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
as far behind them as they could on the eve of WWII. All of them had their own reasons. Some left because of their ethnicity, others because of their religion. Some left because of their politics, and others because they feared the upheaval they were sure was looming on the horizon. For Kulischer and his brother the reason was close at hand. Not only were they Jewish, they forecast the outcome of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
based on demographic trends. They reasoned that Russia and Germany were on a collision course and Germany would lose .
“Man's history,” Kulischer remarked, “is the story of his wanderings” . From the standpoint of the
sociology of knowledgeThe Sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies...
he added, “Most scholars are rooted in their environment. They differ in their ability to outgrow it” . By combining those two statements we have Kulischer and a great many of his peers who lived as exiles abroad and grew as they moved, for instance
Austrian Social Scientists in Exile 1933-1945With the rise of National Socialism numerous artists, scientists and writers fled to other lands. Among them were many Austrian social scientists. Often they left because of their ancestry and frequently because of their political views...
..
As Jackson and Howe recently observed in evaluating the impact of migrations:
"E. M. Kulischer once reminded his readers that in A.D. 900 Berlin had no Germans, Moscow had no Russians, Budapest had no Hungarians, Madrid was a Moorish settlement, and Constantinople had hardly any Turks. He added that the Normans had not yet settled in Great Britain and before the sixteenth century there were no Europeans living in North or South America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa."
Publications
Eugene M. Kulischer published several books, a selection:
- 1932. Kriegs- und Wanderzüge. Weltgeschichte als Völkerbewegung. Witk Alexander Kulischer. Berlin/Leipzig 1932.
- 1943. The Displacement of Population in Europe. Montreal 1943.
- 1948. Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947. New York 1948.
Further reading
- A. J. Jaffe (1962). “Notes on the Population Theory of Eurgene M. Kulischer”. In: The Milbank Memeorial Fund Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2. (April 1962). Pp. 187-206.
- Richard Jackson and Neil Howe (2008). “The Graying of the Great Powers”. In: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century. Washington 2008, p. 15.