Alexander Gerschenkron was a Russian-born American Jewish economic historian and professor in Harvard, trained in the Austrian School of economics. He kept to his roots - in his economics, history and as a critic of Russian literature. His early work concentrated on development in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In a celebrated 1947 article, he found the Gerschenkron effect (changing the base year for an index determines the growth rate of the index). His early work often pursued the statistical tricks of Soviet planners. Gerschenkron also advanced the linear stages theory of economic development which posits that economic development goes forward in fairly determined stages