Adam Zwass

Adam Zwass (born December 27, 1913 in Cisna , today Poland; † June 16, 2001 Saddle River (New Jersey) , USA) was an economist for the countries of COMECON and non-fiction author.

The son from a middle-class Jewish family grew up in Lviv and was involved in the communist party in Poland during the interwar period. He was gunned down during a demonstration and spent six years in the Sieradz political prison . Zwass survived the Second World War in the Soviet Union , where he was considered "unreliable" and was deported to the Urals . After 1945 Zwass worked for the Polish National Bank in Warsaw, where he also received his doctorate and habilitation as a university teacher. From 1964 to 1969 he was Polish representative and headed the banking and foreign exchange department of the COMECON business organization in Moscow. Due to the anti-Semitic tendencies of Polish domestic politics at the time, Zwass emigrated to Austria in 1969 and was employed as an Eastern expert at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank . After the death of his wife Friederike, Zwass moved to the USA in 1996, where his son Vladimir Zwass was and is professor of management information systems at Fairleigh Dickinson University .

Zwass has published numerous specialist publications on monetary policy and integration issues, and has always represented the convertibility of the COMECON currencies as an instrument of economic development and economic integration. Numerous books on the economic development tendencies in Eastern Europe come from Zwass, which also received international attention and have been translated (mainly into English). He received high awards from both Poland and Austria.

Works (selection)

• The currency in foreign trade of the Comecon countries , Wiener Inst. F. International Economic Comparisons, 1973
• On the problem of currency relations between East and West , Europaverlag, Vienna 1974
• A planned economy through the ages , Europaverlag, 1982
• The Economies of Eastern Europe in a Time of Change , 1984
• Two world systems, Europaverlag Vienna, 1985
• The Council for Mutual Economic Aid 1949 to 1987 Springer Verlag, Vienna 1988
• From failed Communism to Underdeveloped Capitalism ME Sharpe, 1995
• Incomplete Revolutions . ME Sharpe, 1999

Web links

• Works by and about Adam Zwass  in the German Digital Library
• Obituary by his publisher MESharpe, Part One
• Obituary, Part Two