Civilianization Elsewhere

Abstract

Aversion of the discipline of economics to things military, which Sovietology, its peripheral field, emulated, is shown to be a part of a more general pattern in the social sciences. A survey of articles about the German economy in 1934–1939 finds that the authors largely ignored another great peacetime military buildup of the twentieth century. It was seen as a peculiar and successful variant of employment policy, with potential lessons for other Depression-stricken economies. Archeologists and anthropologists bypassed the evidence of warfare in pre-literate societies, or gave it strained pacific interpretations. Academic historians marginalized their colleagues specializing in military history. Civilianizing tendencies in the study of other countries and in other disciplines support some of my arguments about Sovietology, and at the same time make its case all the more instructive.