his Handler und Helden (1915), German economist and sociologist Werner Sombart interpreted Great War as an existential battle not just between nations but between cultures and worldviews. According to Sombart, West European civilization was based on ideas of and on commercial values, which he identified with Jewish spirit. The typical West European was a merchant, exclusively interested in what life could offer him in terms of goods and comfort. contrast, Germany was a nation of heroes, who were prepared to sacrifice themselves for higher ideals. (1) With his book, Sombart contributed to radical right-wing tendency of so-called Conservative Revolution in Germany, leading ideologists of which were Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, and Ernst Junger. Surprisingly, though he matured and operated within a very different political tradition, Iosif Stalin's views about mentality of nations of Europe were very similar. This is not to say that Soviet dictator was of one mind with Conservative Revolutionaries in all respects. He would certainly never have classified the ideas of 1789 as decadent. For him, they were precisely higher values for which one should sacrifice oneself. It was greedy capitalists with their commercial mentality who had betrayed revolutionary ideals. The Communists had inherited mantle of French Revolution. his own way, Stalin might even be called pro-Western--in sense that he was an ardent modernizer and a jealous admirer of Western progress. Typically, in February 1947 he remarked to Sergei Eisenstein that it was impossible to deny progressive role of Christianization of Russia. It marked Russian state's shift toward joining up with West, instead of an orientation toward East. (3) Until his death, it remained Stalin's fond goal to overtake West in terms of civilization and technology. Russia's backwardness deeply troubled him, as is evident in his well-known speech of February 1931 about causes of Russian historical defeats. (4) The Soviet leader betrayed his insecurity with remarks such as those made to a Polish delegation in April 1945: the Polish workers are good workers. They are more cultured than ours. The proximity of West makes itself felt. (5) Stalin did his best to convince himself that East Europeans were no less developed than their Western counterparts. At a meeting of economic leaders and Stakhanovites in Kremlin in October 1937, he admitted that Russians remained culturally behind, but in terms of political culture they were ahead. In West people don't throw cigarette stubs on floor, but working people over there are slaves of capital. (6) He once told Andrei Gromyko that the Bulgarian people are not at all at a lower level of general development than Germans. times long ago, when ancestors of Germans still lived in woods, Bulgarians already had a high culture. (7) But Stalin did not really believe this himself. During hysterical anti-cosmopolitan campaigns of his last years, dictator insisted that Russians had always been world's greatest pioneers. But very fact that he reiterated Russian superiority so emphatically confirmed that he realized that this priority had not yet been achieved. That said, parallels between Stalin's views and Sombart's are indeed striking. Like Sombart, Soviet leader celebrated heroic spirit of sacrifice, and he acknowledged that Western culture overvalued comfort compared to struggle. Like Sombart, he abhorred commercial spirit. For a Communist, Stalin put a remarkable emphasis on cultural, as opposed to socio-economic, downside of capitalism. He criticized Europe as a capitalist culture, condemning it as a morally defective system. Capitalism denied people possibility of becoming heroes and thereby sapped its own vital strength. …