Barney Schwalberg

BRUNSWICK – Barney Schwalberg, professor emeritus of economics at Brandeis University, passed away on Nov. 17, 2024, in Brunswick, at the age of 95.

Barney Kirsch Schwalberg was born on August 2, 1929, in New York City to Claire Kirsch Schwalberg and Reuben Schwalberg, a pharmacist. When Barney was very young, his parents divorced and Claire married Roman Slobodin, a writer and newspaper reporter.

In 1938, the family moved to Palestine, to the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiyot, where Roman was a reporter for the Jewish Telegraph Agency. Barney recalled speaking fluent Hebrew as a child and, along with his older brother Bobby, lighting firecrackers under the camels. However, the posting ended abruptly with the start of World War II, and the family left on the last boat out with money borrowed from friends. They re-settled in Washington Heights. Barney attended the Bronx High School of Science and the College of the City of New York, but his main interest was chess. When his family moved to Philadelphia, Barney transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Wharton School with a degree in General Studies with a focus on statistics.

After college, with the start of the Korean War, Barney enlisted in the Army and enrolled in the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif., where he learned Russian and sang in a Russian chorus. He picked up the language easily and began reading Russian-language chess books and developed a lifelong devotion to the work of Pushkin and Chekhov. He was then sent to Hawaii, where he was employed intercepting and translating Soviet cables.

After his discharge moved to Washington, DC, where he worked for the Census Bureau’s Foreign Manpower Research Office studying the Soviet economy. After a few years he enrolled in graduate school in economics at Harvard, where he received his Ph.D. in 1964. He married Adelle Davidson, an elementary school teacher, in 1964, and began teaching economics at Brandeis University in 1965. He was granted tenure and was promoted to full professor on the strength of his skill as a teacher. He retired in 1999, and one of his former students established a scholarship in economics in his honor.

He had a longstanding appointment at the Harvard Russian Research Center where he continued his research on Soviet education systems and relished weekly coffee hours with other Soviet scholars, and he maintained friendships with many Soviet emigrés. In 1986, he began accompanying tour groups to Russia, giving lectures on Russian history, literature, and culture (and possibly some economics).

In 2009, he and Adelle moved to Brunswick to be closer to his daughter Renee and her children. Adelle passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2011 and he continued to live in an independent living community, where he was known to hold forth on a multitude of topics in the dining room. As his parkinsonism progressed, he moved to assisted living and memory care at Midcoast Senior Health Center, where the staff cherished him for his kindness and wit, and they note that he corrected their grammar until his last days.

He is survived by his daughter Renee, son-in-law John Anton, and granddaughters Claire and Leah Anton.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. Condolences may be shared at FuneralAlternatives.net.