Polish Economists in Nehru's India: Making Science for the Third World in an Era of De-Stalinization and Decolonization

• Published in: Slavic review Vol. 77; no. 3; pp. 588 - 610
• Main Author: Mazurek, Małgorzata
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01-10-2018
• Subjects: BEYOND THE IRON CURTAIN: EASTERN EUROPE AND THE GLOBAL COLD WAR; Cold War; Common ground; Decolonization; Developing countries; Diplomatic & consular services; Economic policy; Economists; Experts; Geopolitics; Industrial development; International relations; Kalecki, Michael (1899-1970); Land; LDCs; Marxism; Modernization; Planning; Politics; Science; Social sciences; Stalinism; Stock brokers; Transnationalism; War; Poland; United States > US; Eastern Europe; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics > USSR; India; Kolkata India
• ISSN: 0037-6779; 2325-7784
• DOI: 10.1017/slr.2018.201

Between 1956–68 economic expertise became Poland's key export product in the decolonizing world. India, a broker of social science in the Cold War, became a geopolitical gateway for Polish economists’ spread of developmental thinking that revived heterodox Marxism and peasant studies. In this article, Małgorzata Mazurek investigates epistemic and intellectual effects of Polish – Indian encounters and how they evolved separately from Soviet Third World politics. Mazurek argues that during de-Stalinization and decolonization, failures and obstacles to planning and land reforms came to be seen as a common ground between eastern Europe and South Asia. This shared perception also revived the historical legacy of central and east European social science, which was internationalized in new ways both because, and in spite, of the Cold War.