Jan Gotlib "Bogumił" Bloch (Russian: Иван Станиславович Блиох or Блох; July 24, 1836 – January 7, 1902) was a Polish banker and railway financier who devoted his private life to the study of modern industrial warfare.

Born Jewish and a convert to Calvinism, he spent considerable effort to opposing the prevalent antisemitic policies of the Tsarist government, and was sympathetic to the fledgling Zionist movement.

Born in Radom, Poland, on July 24, 1836, Bloch became intrigued by the victory of the North German Confederation over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, which suggested to him that the solution of diplomatic problems by warfare had become obsolete in Europe.

To the British readers of The Contemporary Review, Bloch wrote in 1901: Having busied myself for over fourteen years with the study of war in all its phases and aspects, I am astonished to find that the remarkable evolution which is rapidly turning the sword into a ploughshare has passed almost unnoticed even by the professional watchmen who are paid to keep a sharp look-out.

The facts which are there garnered together, and the consequences which flow from them, run too strongly counter to the vested interests of the most powerful class of the community to admit of their being immediately embodied in measures of reform.

The Russian and German monarchies proved equally incapable of assimilating Bloch's cautionary words concerning revolution, paying the price with summary execution and exile, respectively.

Bloch's foresight is somewhat qualified by what proved an underestimation of the tactical and strategic significance of indirect (e.g., artillery) fire, and his failure to foresee the development of the armoured tank and military aircraft.

Following the wave of pogroms of the 1880s and the early 1890s, a commission headed by the vociferously antisemitic Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve recommended a further worsening of the Jews' legal position.

[5] On the basis of extensive statistical data, compiled mainly in the Pale of Settlement, he gave a comprehensive account of the Jewish role in the Empire's economic life, in crafts, trade and industry.

In June 1899 Herzl arrived at the Hague Peace Conference in an effort to gain an audience with the Tsar, for which purpose he met with Bloch as with other people having access to higher echelons of the Russian government.

In June 1899, Bloch, at Herzl's request, lobbied the Russian government to lift a ban on the sale in its territory of shares of the Zionist Jewish Colonial Trust (predecessor of the present Israeli National Bank).