Synopses & Reviews
Shows that the communist system in science and higher education was created less by an intentionally-imposed Soviet model than by the pressures and agendas developed within communist societies to reshape science and learning in successive periods of upheaval and consolidation. The communist academic regime was considerably more complex and historically contingent than previously recognized, as the persistence of many of its features after the fall of communism demonstrates.
The latest archival research by an international team of scholars is brought together to produce the first comparative treatment of the periods of upheaval that shaped the rise and fall of the communist academic regime in Russia and East Central Europe. This volume sheds new light on the question of a Soviet model by examining how a particular Soviet system of science and higher education emerged, how it was exported and imported across varying local, national and international settings, and how key aspects of it outlived the political system that fostered it. The contemporary crises in science and higher education surrounding the demise of communism appear as a distinctive break from the patterns set into motion in the 1920s and 30s, but also as one more upheaval following a long line of previous reorderings throughout the 20th century that were conditioned by broader cataclysms in politics, society, ideology, and culture.
Synopsis
Gives a long-term historical perspective on the current (post-1989) changes in the world of science and higher education in former communist countries.
Synopsis
The first comparative examination of the communist system of science and higher learning in Russia and East Central Europe, focusing on the succession of great upheavals that accompanied the rise and fall of communism. This book brings together the work of an international group of scholars and new archival materials from the region itself.
About the Author
MICHAEL DAVID-FOX is Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland at College Park.GYORGY PETERI is Professor, Department of History, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
On the Origins and Demise of the Soviet Academic Regime by Michael David-Fox and Gyorgy Peteri
The Origins
The Formation of the Soviet Academy of Sciences: Bolsheviks and Academicians in the 1920s and 1930s by Vera Tolz
The Assault on the Universities and the Dynamics of Stalin's "Great Break," 1928-1932 by Michael David-Fox
Stalinism and Science: Physics and Philosophical Disputes in the USSR, 1930-1955 by Paul Josephson
The Transfers
The Sovietization of Higher Education in the Czech Lands, East Germany, and Poland during the Stalinist Period, 1948-1954 by John Connelly
Lysenkoism in Europe: Export-Import of the Soviet Model by Nikolai Krementsov
Science Between Two Worlds: Foreign "Models" and Hungary's Academia, 1945-1949 by Gyorgy Peteri
The Transformations: Continuities and Discontinuities after 1989
The Academy vs. the Rest by Stephen Fortescue
How Willing Are Scientists to Reform Their Own Institutions? by Loren R. Graham
The Legacy of State-Socialism in Academia by Gyorgy Peteri
Conclusion
Scholars Steer Their Ships through the Turbulent Seas of History by Linda Lucia Lubrano