Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mathematicians Going East, Pasha Zusmanovich

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

I survey emigration of mathematicians from Europe, before and during WWII, to Russia. The emigration started at the end of 1920s, the time of “Great Break”, and accelerated in 1930s, after the introduction in Germany of the “non-Aryan laws”. Not everyone who wanted to emigrate managed to do so, and most of those who did spent a relatively short time in Russia, being murdered or deported, or fleeing the Russian regime. After 1937, the year of “Great Purge”, only a handful of emigrant mathematicians remained, and even fewer managed to leave a trace in the scientific milieu of their new …