Background
Born in Radom, Poland, Bloch (also spelled Bliokh) became a successful banker and was involved in the construction and operation of the Russian railway system. He amassed so large a fortune that he became known as the Polish Rothschild.
Born in Radom, Poland, Bloch (also spelled Bliokh) became a successful banker and was involved in the construction and operation of the Russian railway system. He amassed so large a fortune that he became known as the Polish Rothschild.
Bloch was a friend of Theodor Herzl (q.v.) whom he had met at the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 and he helped Herzl in his efforts to meet prominent Russian authorities. He was also involved in the Jewish Colonization Association in Russia.
Bloch was also internationally famous as a pacifist, and in 1898 published in "Russian a study of war" (“The War of the Future in Its Technical, Economic and Political Significance”).
The six- volume endeavor was said to have helped convince Tsar Nicholas II to convene the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. With volumes on weaponry and munitions, strategy and tactics in land warfare, war at sea, economic dislocation and material losses, and the problem of casualties, the study covered all aspects of modern-day war with the assistance of illustrations, statistics, graphs, maps, and diagrams. Its conclusion was that war between modern armies could only end in stalemate, and would be fought at the cost of tremendous financial expenditures and damage to the economy.
Therefore, he concluded, international arbitration was the only solution. His critics, however, maintained, that his analysis of war and his thesis that war was not feasible as an instrument of policy took into account only material forces without consideration for moral and human factors that would help determine an outcome.
Although Bloch himself converted to Calvinism, he was preoccupied with the fate of Russian Jewry and actively campaigned on their behalf. He fought against anti-Semitic discrimination and published "A Comparison of the Material and Moral Welfare of the Western, Great Russian, and Polish Provinces" (1901), which pointed to the contributions of the Russian Jews to the economy of their country. The five-volume book was confiscated and burned after publication, but a few copies rescued from the flames were later summarized by A. P. Subbotin and published under another title in Russian (“The Jewish Question in Its Right Light”) in 1903.