Communication Between Slovak And Soviet History Studies In The Years 1945–1989 (Instrumentalization, Stages Of Development, Research Topics)

Daniš, Miroslav (2026) Communication Between Slovak And Soviet History Studies In The Years 1945–1989 (Instrumentalization, Stages Of Development, Research Topics). RUSSIANSTUDIES.HU, 8 (1). pp. 151-168. ISSN 2677-1640

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Abstract

In this study, we have outlined some aspects of the broad and unresolved issue of thedevelopment of Slovak (Czech) history studies in the second half of the 20th century, adiscipline which was marked by the birth and fall of one of the world’s bipolarities and whichalso manifested itself in the academic world as a confrontation between two diametricallyopposed worldviews and methodologies. From the late 1940s, the almost regular missionsof Soviet Marxist historians to Czechoslovakia, especially to universities in Prague, Brno,and Bratislava, contributed significantly to the instrumentalization of Marxist-Leninistmethodology in Slovak history studies. The character of these missions gradually changed.Initially, they were more didactic, methodological, and educational in nature, but later theytook on the content and forms of academic cooperation at the level of research in thearchives and the organization of joint conferences. From the 1960s, they were characterizedby the creation and joint work of the Czechoslovak-Soviet commission of historians withinthe academies of sciences (followed later by the Czech-Russian, Czech-Ukrainian, SlovakRussian and Slovak-Ukrainian Commissions of Historians). In the 1970s and 1980s, Slovakhistory studies gradually expanded its contacts to include cooperation with a number ofSoviet universities and several departments of the USSR Academy of Sciences (especiallythe Institute of Slavic Studies in Moscow). We use individual examples to show how the socalled “old school of positivist historians” coped with the advent of new social conditionsand with the application or rejection of the new Marxist interpretation of history. We defineindividual stages of development in the application of Marxist-Leninist methodology. After1989, many, especially influential Slovak historians, pointed out and continue to point outall the pitfalls and unresolved issues in the field of knowledge and understanding of themethodology and mechanisms of the study of history in the second half of the 20th centuryin the spirit of Marxism-Leninism in all its manifestations and forms.

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