Jan Surman, Lukas Becht, Maciej Górny, Kornelia Kończal, Doubravka Olšáková, Tomáš W. Pavlíček, Luboš Studený, Michaela Šmidrkalová
The 1968–69 period was a difficult time in Czechoslovak–Polish relations. In the early spring of 1968, the political crisis and antisemitic campaign affected many Polish scholars, forcing them to leave the country, while Czechoslovak scholars tried to utilize their only recently attained relative freedom to aid their Polish colleagues. In August of the same year, this period of relative freedom—known as the Prague Spring—came to an end when the armies of the five Warsaw Pact countries, including Poland, invaded Czechoslovakia. Although many Czechoslovak scholars would emigrate in the years that followed,1 Poland was not on their itinerary. While the two scholarly communities continued to cooperate on a formal level, the archival records of the following few years read like a list of complaints from both sides. Nevertheless, through a combination of administrative measures and informal initiatives, academic contacts would return to their previous level.
Poland and Czechoslovakia—ruled by communist parties from 1948—had emerged as independent states with a common border after 1918. This border also became a subject of dispute, and the interwar period was marked by the Czechoslovak–Polish (Seven-Day) War over Těšín/Cieszyn Silesia in 1919 and Czechoslovak support for Ukrainian and Russian emigration, which Poland interpreted as support for Ukrainian separatism.2 After the Munich Agreement in 1938, Poland annexed parts of Cieszyn Silesia, thereby further straining relations. These were restored by decree to reinforce the socialist alliance (which remained firm until Polish troops helped put an end to the Prague Spring). At the same time, the three nations involved—Czechs, Poles, and Slovaks—were in the process of nation-building, which involved mobilizing different, and sometimes conflicting, pasts.3 Thus, some processes needed time even at the time of alliance—like the signing of the border treaty, which happened only 1958. Importantly, while the Czech and Slovak nation-builders invoked a revival—of an early modern (Czech) or medieval (Slovak) culture that had been suppressed under Habsburg rule and then revived in the nineteenth century—Polish nationalism cultivated a continuity with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including its eighteenth-century cultural and scientific developments, thus claiming a place among the cultivated nations of the time. These differences created tensions and also shaped stereotypical perceptions. The cultures of Czechs and Slovaks were considered “small” in Poland, which, in turn, was viewed as an egotistical, self-centered culture from the Czech and Slovak sides (as Czechs and Slovaks were supposedly historically more open to cultural exchange with other Slavs).4 Not unlike the situation between Poland and East Germany, whose relationship was often characterized by the term “forced friendship,” while official relations were formally friendly, in practice they were tense and more often disrupted by individual acts than by politically structured approaches.5
The evolution of Czechoslovak–Polish relations in the midst of socialist rule in East-Central Europe is in many ways characteristic of relations between other socialist states. Oscillating between friendship and conflict, shaped—but not defined—by shifting political prerogatives, they also relied on a variety of informal encounters, some of which dated back to the interwar period. Throughout the four decades of the Eastern Bloc’s existence, the politics of rapprochement dictated the rhetoric of interstate relations, while nationalisms still dominated the region—including the Russian-centric imperial politics of the Soviet Union. Czechoslovaks and Poles experienced contrasting dynamics: during the post-1968 “normalization” period in Czechoslovakia, when the Prague Spring reforms were rescinded and their proponents and supporters were persecuted,6 the country became increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union, while Poland moved toward greater independence. However, differences existed even earlier; for example, Fulbright scholarships were available in Poland as early as 1959 but not in Czechoslovakia until the late 1970s.7
Because of their peripheral geographical position in the Eastern Bloc, both countries also had an important intermediary function. Their locations and traditions of intellectual contacts were favorable for international congresses, as they were equally accessible to West and East. Moreover, local conferences organized by the central institutes of their respective academy of sciences, which were often held in mountain regions, involved scholars from regional universities and research institutes (which was particularly welcomed by the Slovaks). Although the maneuvering between these different prerogatives, varying at the local, socialist, and global levels, was characteristic of the socialist period, the intensity of these opposing factors in the Czechoslovak–Polish example makes it an ideal case study of interstate “cooperation and competition.”8
Almost four decades after the collapse of the socialist system, the question of how to write the history of socialist science continues to divide scholars. This has been exacerbated by the recent right-wing resurgence in East-Central Europe, which has often used nationalist discourses of othering, and also by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2014 and has come to influence broader intellectual debates outside the two countries involved since the full-scale invasion in 2022. This has led to a wide range of debates on decolonization, from those that use nuanced theoretical tools to those that describe any kind of socialist entanglement as a form of imperialist oppression.9 While the resurgence of black-and-white historiography mostly concerns relations with (Soviet) Russia, it has also left its mark on the subject of this book, as historians following this dualist approach were deliberately blurring the line between cooperation and coercion within the Eastern Bloc.
It is at this point that the concept of entanglement becomes very fruitful, as it has been developed to study colonial and postcolonial phenomena of knowledge exchange, thus including reflection on the effects of power asymmetry on often idealized relations.10 These idealizations have included both the “West” and the “East” (that is, the Soviet Union), and it has often been the case that those who idealized one demonized the other. For many scholars, these hierarchies, especially with regard to the East, were overturned after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also led to the cessation of ongoing collaborations and, in some cases, to the disappearance of memories of them.11 This poses a methodological challenge to both conventional history, based on written sources, and oral history.12
It is important to note that, in our case, this reflection does not begin or end with the position of the Soviets or the “West” in socialism, nor with the position of Czechoslovakia and Poland in relation to each other (or with the different positions of Czechs, Poles, and Slovaks in this equation). For example, the Slovak Academy of Sciences (which existed in parallel with the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences [ČSAV]) was able to organize numerous informal international workshops due to its position further away from the centers of power—especially after 1968, when Slovakia was less affected by restrictive normalization policies.13 Slovak was also often the language in which translations of foreign literature (for example, by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu) could be published before they appeared in Czech. Thus, the case studies in this volume must focus on a variety of power differentials in situ and on a variety of actors with different legal statuses and identifications. And because of the shifting borders, these identifications may also differ from citizenship and may not fall into the categories into which the nationalizing states divided people.14
Due to the embeddedness of Czechoslovak–Polish history in the complex socialist power relations, the case studies presented in this volume move beyond the question of bilateral relations to reassess the circulation of knowledge across the Eastern Bloc and beyond. Socialist internationalism, émigré scientists, and science diplomacy situate these individual stories in broader global contexts. Our introduction follows the reverse path: from the global to the international to the socialist to the bilateral level, ending with the locality of the case studies. It was important to show how the actors in the various encounters mobilized different resources and thus co-created the different contexts in which they acted.15 Although hierarchically governed, the socialist system allowed for a great deal of flexibility, which is a feature we wanted to call attention to. Therefore, the introduction does not offer a grand narrative, but rather focuses on fissures, interstices, and ruptures within master narratives—sites of tension and ambiguity that may open up new avenues for historical reflection.
Recent decades have witnessed numerous shifts in the conceptualization of the history of knowledge networks, culminating—probably tentatively—in global and planetary histories. As the 2020s have been less a time of growing globalization and more one of disruptions to global flows (COVID-19, the war against Ukraine, Trump’s tariff wars and the reconfiguration of transatlantic relations, etc.), historians are likely to respond further. However, global history is not only history on a new scale but also a perspective that has implications for thinking about the relationality of all history, including microhistory.16
While the history of science experienced a similar trend, an important intermediary in this respect was entangled history and the history of the circulation of knowledge.17 It emerged as a response to a long series of developments, both international (transnational history, postcolonial history) and local Parisian globalized (transfert culturel and histoire croisée). It showed that a number of “Western” developments were the result of the circulation of knowledge originating in colonies, an origin that was rendered invisible in the process of its onward travel and codification. Methodologically, this meant, on the one hand, a decentering of the received narratives of the traditional history of science, and on the other, a necessity to consider local developments, regardless of their geographical location, as part of globally circulating knowledge. Importantly, however, the question of why certain knowledge does not circulate, or circulates only locally, also became crucial. This brought media and the mediality of transfer, as well as questions of power asymmetries, more into focus than in global history. It also accentuated the localist perspective on knowledge, as opposed to the assumed universality that had dominated the historiography of science (and science itself) since the last decades of the nineteenth century.18
Similarly, since the 2010s, the history of internationalism has abandoned the “sanitized version of internationalism, with its seemingly universal values and timeless institutions” in favor of viewing it as a “complex and contested process.”19 In the history of science, this went hand in hand with the abandonment of the idea that there could be such a thing as neutral, value-free internationalism.20 This necessitated the addition of a historically nuanced analysis of the process, reflecting changing power relations between individual and collective actors, competing interests, and opposition to internationalism.21 The interest in internationalism as practice also led to an investigation of what might be called the “dark side” of internationalism.22 While this research began with the study of fascist transnationalism, with the rise of new authoritarianism and of the New Right around the world, there has been growing focus on illiberal internationalism, including the relationship between liberal and illiberal internationalism.23 In recent years, much attention has been paid to the connection between the far right, illiberalism, and anti-gender and anti-feminist movements, revealing how they form productive networks that in many ways contradict the idea that such movements are nationalist and anti-globalist.24 The focus on liberal internationalism also explains why one of its key alternatives, Catholic internationalism, has received little attention, even though it was hailed as a model international community as early as 1925.25 Socialist internationalism, another alternative to liberal internationalism, will be discussed in more detail below.
In recent decades transnational historiography has also become critical of the promises of the Habermasian understanding of the transnational sphere as a counterweight to nationalist internationalism. The critique from decolonial studies that transnationalism (but also internationalism) has been constructed as a “Western” category has become increasingly salient. Looking at practices of transnational activism has been suggested as one way of “decolonizing” histories of internationalism.26 This follows a general trend of writing “transnationalism from below,” to focus on actors, their agencies, and the ways they shape the transnational sphere through their actions.27
The present volume explores the insights arising from this reflexivity. Specifically, it addresses socialist internationalism as a particular version of twentieth-century internationalism, and also the practice of “doing internationalism”28 under non-democratic conditions, which it adopts as a point of departure. Writing “internationalism from below” and focusing on actors engaged in a variety of transnational activities led not only to a readjustment of scales, but also to a search for methodological innovations at the beginning of the project that resulted in this publication. Our aim, in particular, was to use ego documents and oral history to complement and counterbalance narratives rooted in institutional archives. This allowed us to more thoroughly explore the possibilities of maintaining agency within a socialist, Soviet-dominated, strictly hierarchical academic system, while at the same time not idealizing the actors’ egocentric accounts, which are characteristic of post-socialist memory cultures.29
As Rachel Applebaum notes in her study of the socialist “empire of friends,” “Soviet and Eastern European citizens were bound together not only by military force but also by transnational contacts and personal encounters.”30 Internationalism and transnationalism have long been a particular focus of historians of socialist science and culture, oscillating between critiques of its politically imposed limits and demonstrations of how it expanded the scope of traditional treaties.31 Recently, the term “restricted internationalism” has been proposed to characterize the Soviet-imposed limits on the autonomy of the science policies of the socialist states, which corresponds to the Soviet idea of the “limited sovereignty” of non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries (popularly known as the Brezhnev Doctrine).32 This idea refers to the fact that when we compare experiences in Moscow, Kyiv, or Warsaw, we encounter differing degrees of freedom within academic circles. However, differences pertained also to different types of institutions, and even institutes’ cadres were divided into different categories. This was also applicable to travel: the East German term Reisekader captures this difference very well, as it distinguishes between those who were allowed to travel outside the Eastern Bloc and those who were not.33 Nevertheless, there were ways to get around the restrictions.34 Scholars had their own specific interests and strategies, and they were also able to use internationalism as a resource for personal gain.35
The initial focus of the historiography of socialist internationalism was the study of inter-bloc contacts, with a dynamic that can be described as “from the Iron Curtain to the Nylon Curtain,”36 that is, with increasing attention to the permeability of the “East–West” divide. Increasingly, this focus has shifted to work on “second world” engagement with the “third world” on the one hand,37 and to questions of internal transfers and structures within the Soviet Union on the other.38 While still Soviet-centric, the Eastern Bloc has increasingly been portrayed as a space of diverse interests, in which countries could pursue their own agendas, both in terms of contacts with socialist and non-socialist countries. This is in line with the ongoing discussion on the decolonization of Central and Eastern European history, as it concerns not only the question of multiperspectivity but, more importantly, the epistemic framework that shapes the debates on the Eastern Bloc.39 In this regard, relational history offers an escape from the methodological nationalism that characterizes post-1989/1991 historiography.
Importantly, even research on organizations that were multilateral by design, such as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON),40 has paid little attention to multilateralism within the alliance.41 There is an ongoing debate about whether COMECON’s emphasis on “socialist integration”—the organization’s slogan—was merely a rhetorical tool, especially in symbolic rivalry with the European Economic Community,42 or an actual policy. Nevertheless, compared to other socialist organizations, COMECON provided the greatest space for the expression of the agency of non-Soviet actors.43 It was thus both an instrument of Soviet policy and a space in which the autonomy of individual states could be exercised. These multilateral cooperation spaces deserve particular attention in order to uncover the different dynamics that shaped them. They were not only intended to coordinate national research, but they also had the—often unfulfilled—ambition of jointly producing knowledge across the Eastern Bloc.
The effort for cooperation within the framework of COMECON intensified in the 1970s and was aimed at conducting joint research programs and establishing joint research institutes.44 As the chapters by Luboš Studený and Lukas Becht or Maciej Górny in this volume demonstrate, the support of COMECON—not only financial but also organizational in providing a communicative platform—was crucial for bilateral cooperation, often replacing and building on it.
Another space of multilateral cooperation was created by the Academies of Sciences of the Socialist Countries. The first joint meeting of their representatives took place in Warsaw in 1962, building on earlier bilateral cooperation. A range of problem commissions was set up to coordinate joint research initiatives. In 1971, the Agreement on Multilateral Scientific Cooperation between the Academies of Sciences of the Socialist Countries was signed, providing a formal framework for expanded collaboration, including negotiations over participation in COMECON projects. Thus, most multilateral socialist cooperation had a direct connection to the tasks assigned by COMECON, contributing to the entanglement of these cooperative spaces.
Multilateralism also led to the creation of joint projects and institutes, the most famous of which were the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna (founded in 1956 as an independent institute, from 1971 COMECON-affiliated) and INTERKOSMOS (founded in 1967).45 In addition to the COMECON centers, cooperative centers were established throughout the Eastern Bloc, building on the expertise of existing institutes, especially those affiliated with the academies of sciences. The Stefan Banach International Mathematical Center for Socialist Countries in Warsaw (established in 1972) and the International Laboratory for Strong Magnetic Fields and Low Temperature Research in Wrocław (established in 1968) serve as illustrative examples.46 As Tomáš Pavlíček shows in this volume examining the (ultimately unsuccessful) creation of the Center for Category Theory in Prague, these efforts were closely intertwined with everyday politics.
Importantly, while the socialist countries officially presented a united front while acting in the international arena, various allegiances and agendas of individual actors should not be understood as insignificant diversity that disappeared once the unity of the Bloc was required. At the 8th World Congress of Sociology in Toronto in 1974, for example, there were conflicts within the Polish delegation, some of whose members refused to support the pre-agreed socialist candidate, which caused the socialist countries to lose a place on the International Sociological Association board.47 In order to understand the dynamics in socialist science, especially its international dimension, it is therefore necessary to also pay attention to the minor conflicts that are intertwined with the political prerogatives and are rarely recorded in official documents.
In the context of Czechoslovak–Polish science and technology relations between 1945 and 1989, the transnational sphere played a crucial role in facilitating exchange and cooperation beyond the constraints imposed by state-centered diplomacy. Neutral platforms where scientists from both countries could engage in dialogue, share knowledge, and contribute to global debates were provided by organizations such as the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (est. 1957), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Laxenburg near Vienna; est. 1972), and the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (CEUCORS, Vienna; est. 1963). These interactions allowed researchers to bypass political tensions and ideological divisions but at the same time foster a shared scientific identity within the Eastern Bloc, while also connecting with the international scientific community.
The general framework provided by the United Nations system for scientific and technological cooperation, which provided a global platform for multilateral cooperation, had a decisive influence on non-partisan internationalism. Through specialized agencies such as UNESCO, Czechoslovak and Polish scientists participated in international research programs, contributing to and benefiting from global knowledge networks. In both countries, non-state actors such as Pugwash and IIASA also influenced the development of scientific agendas and research priorities. These organizations encouraged the exchange of ideas and methodologies that were less constrained by national politics by focusing on issues of global importance such as disarmament, environmental challenges and technological modernization. In addition to facilitating the transfer of scientific expertise, this transnational engagement empowered individual scientists to act as diplomatic intermediaries, shaping the trajectory of scientific cooperation in ways that state institutions could not fully control. As a result, these networks contributed to the gradual erosion of rigid ideological boundaries, paving the way for more flexible and innovative approaches to science and technology in the region.
While internationalism focuses on the transcendence of various borders, it should not be forgotten that it was not possible for interstate relations to take place in a power-free space. Thus, an important concept in this volume is the “in-betweenness” of non-Soviet socialist actors.48 This refers to the position in which, due to the political constitution of the Eastern Bloc, actors in countries such as Czechoslovakia or Poland were aware of their dependence on the Soviet centers and acted in accordance with this perceived dependence but nevertheless retained a significant degree of autonomy.49 This in-between position distinguishes the East-Central European actors from their Soviet counterparts, even though power relations also had the potential to seriously complicate their everyday affairs, especially tensions with politicians within the respective country (which, however, were often instigated by other scholars). This in-betweenness can also be observed at all levels of international relations, from science diplomacy to interpersonal relations.50 The evolution of this dynamic was influenced by changes in the power relations inside the Soviet hegemonic sphere.
Therefore, studying socialist internationalism with Czechoslovakia and Poland at its core reveals more than just the dynamics of bilateral relations in East-Central Europe. It involves reflection on centers and peripheries and their relations to each other. Given that the history of socialism has been politicized, bringing it back into a general reflection on power relations and their impact on knowledge production helps create a more fine-grained picture of twentieth-century East-Central Europe.
Typically, post-socialist East-Central European literature portrayed the academic landscape of the Eastern Bloc as a competition between the domestic (national) and the foreign (Soviet), often focusing on national liberation and describing advocates of the Soviet system as having been “seduced” or as outright traitors.51 It also used terms such as “spętana Akademia” (tethered academy)52 to emphasize the externally imposed limits of freedom. The history of socialist rule in this narrative was described through the prism of Sovietization, defined as cultural and political imperialism, beginning with Stalinization in 1948 and continuing with varying intensity until the collapse of socialism. In Czechoslovakia, an important element of this narrative was the imposition of “normalization” following the invasion to suppress the Prague Spring in August 1968. In Poland, it was the imposition of martial law in 1981, although its consequences were less far-reaching. However, as Natalia Tsvetkova has convincingly argued, this narrative has largely overlooked the importance of the agency of local actors. She maintains that “the concept of cultural imperialism should be considered through the overt and covert resistance of local recipients,” so as not to incapacitate the historical actors.53
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of literature challenging the Sovietization paradigm by emphasizing the agency of local actors. Rather than focusing on external influences, historians have emphasized the efforts of local socialist elites to maintain agency in the face of Soviet politicians’ willingness to delegate power on the one hand, and the experience of the majority of the population who remained aloof from politics on the other.54 In Czechoslovakia, for example, Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878–1962), Minister of Education (1948–1953) and the first head of the ČSAV (1952–1962), was able to implement a number of reforms that were incompatible with the Soviet system, even though, or perhaps because, he was a supporter of Stalinist policies.55 University professors and students also negotiated the imposed policies and attempted to preserve the local characteristics of their universities.56 However, it was not only elites that had agency: as Patryk Babiracki has argued, lower and middle-level officials were also able to use their agency in an effort to forge integration between the Soviet Union and Poland.57
With regard to intellectuals, recent scholarship has argued that the intelligentsia reproduced itself regardless of the political and social conditions of the system, suggesting that they were able to make good use of their cultural and social capital even when they faced repression as a class.58 At the same time, the prism of changing contexts affected—but did not determine—long-standing intellectual contacts and trends.59
New narratives have also castigated the Sovietization paradigm for overlooking people’s commitment to and belief in socialism. Using the case of the Czechoslovak Marxist philosopher Karel Kosík, Tomáš Hermann discussed how the historiography of scholars persecuted in 1968 tends to accentuate biographical breaks and overlook continuities in intellectual development, which in many cases included not only a belief in Marxism but also a belief in Stalinism, including explicit political engagement.60 The biography of Kosík is not the only such case— for example, the Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman fall into a similar category.61 Other literature, most notably that of Agata Zysiak, has emphasized the socialist drive for modernization, which brought a degree of uniformity and conformity, but also mass education, which, the old intelligentsia considered destructive, but leftist scholars, workers, and many students actively supported.62
The shift from a narrative driven by political concepts to one focused on practices also occurred at the level of the relationship between socialist states. While socialist historiography followed a friendship-driven narrative, post-socialist historiography defined this friendship as “mandated.”63 A look at the groups for whom crossing the border was of paramount importance shows that, beyond the propagandistic tones, there was a plethora of informal contacts that connected socialist subjects. These included smugglers and dissidents, but also artists and scholars.64 As Michaela Šmidrkalová’s contribution to this volume argues, these informal contacts were easier to establish and maintain outside formal structures than within them. While being inside the Academy of Sciences had its obvious advantages, there were also drawbacks.
The formalization of international scientific relations in the socialist countries was a process associated with the prominent role of the academies of sciences. Throughout the Eastern Bloc, the academic system was divided into research, applied research and teaching. The role of universities was to specialize in teaching, with limited resources, both budgetary and temporal, allocated to research and travel. The departmental research institutes were very closely associated with applied research. They operated largely independently of the academies of sciences and the universities, and were directly subordinated to the individual ministries.
The academies of sciences played the preeminent role in research, which is why this volume predominantly focuses on their activities. The academies were responsible for research and were the institution that awarded the highest academic titles. They also often played an advisory role to political bodies and were required to coordinate a national plan for all research institutions in the country. In Czechoslovakia, the chairman of the Academy of Sciences was also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (in Poland two first presidents of the Polish Academies of Sciences (further PAN) were not even members of the party). The lack of direct student contact and the high prestige of internationally recognized research meant that scientists within the academies of sciences were largely subject to a lesser degree of political control, and the academy’s institutes often served as a refuge for those who had been excluded from universities. At the same time, the ČSAV and PAN replaced previously autonomous institutions in 1951 and 1952, respectively. Nevertheless, the division between teaching and research institutions was never clear-cut. Individual overlaps between the academies and universities persisted, as there were (male) professors who held key positions in both during the 1950s. The declared shortage of experts led to the double employment of PhD students and limited the access of younger people (especially women) to leading positions.
Socialist academia was also a highly dynastic system, characterized by limited upward mobility that largely depended on replacing those higher in the hierarchy, and by minimal exchange between different research units, laboratories, or departments.65 This reinforced hierarchical dependency, but at the same time provided a degree of job stability (compared to the highly competitive, grant-dependent careers of twenty-first century academia).
However, this stability had limits, which were mostly related to political events. Most notably, every political rupture led to a wave of dismissals in academia, beginning with the communist takeovers and followed by the even more radical upheavals of 1968 in both countries. Research findings often faced censorship, especially in the humanities and social sciences.66 Participation in conferences abroad was monitored by informants of the secret service (mostly fellow scholars).67 Foreign literature was largely only available in central libraries, access to which often required special permission—especially in the Soviet Union, which was more restricted to international information than its satellite countries. Therefore, frequent visits to libraries in Warsaw or Budapest offered a way for Soviet scholars to keep abreast of new developments in their fields, especially those who were not permitted to travel outside the socialist countries. Polish libraries were frequently cited as being well stocked with non-socialist literature. Conversely, in disciplines such as mathematics, Western literature circulated from the East through Soviet reprints and translations.
Socialist academia was traditionally male-dominated and followed relatively typical patterns for the postwar global North: there were fewer women in the natural sciences than in the humanities, fewer women in the more prestigious disciplines, and a high proportion of women in fields considered feminine, such as literary studies or bibliography.68 Socialism in both society and academia was characterized by equality in theory and the celebration of women in the public sphere, especially on festive occasions. However, in practice gender discrimination was commonplace—and there was scant discussion of its shortcomings. A 1986 Polish study found that 56 percent of female academics felt disadvantaged compared to men when it came to opportunities to travel abroad on a scholarship or for work.69 The reasons for this went unexplored, however, partly because the history of science has traditionally followed “pure” ideas rather than “people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, struggling for credibility and authority,” and partly because research on gender issues has been slow to emerge in East-Central European historiography as a whole.70 It is therefore necessary to find new ways of gathering information. Oral history is indispensable in this respect, as numerous projects have shown and as our interviews have confirmed.71 They suggest that the visible disparity between men and women travelers was more the result of a general disparity at the level of research, rather than specific discrimination in the area of travel arrangements. However, other factors may have played a role, such as the traditional role of women in child care and thus the greater tendency for them to stay at home, even though female academics tend to have significantly fewer children than women working outside academia.72
Importantly, academia consisted of more than just scholars. It rested on the shoulders of a multitude of personnel, from secretaries to librarians to copyists to programmers, all of whom were predominantly female.73 Although these workers were key to the functioning of the academy, they have often been outside the purview of historians of science. On many occasions they cooperated internationally, for example, in the collection of foreign literature, which was supposed to be complementary throughout the Eastern Bloc,74 but these meetings produced fewer sources than scholarly meetings. (This is also true of cooperation between state research institutes and institutes for scientific information, which were tasked with collecting information from international sources, translating it, and disseminating it throughout the scientific community).
In international relations, although Sovietization might have been expected, it was often the case that traditionally close cooperation with countries such as West Germany or France prevailed over the politically prescribed and state-supported eastward orientation.75 In 1959, the number of exchanges between Poland and Western countries was reportedly eight times higher than with the Soviet Union, and cooperation with the Soviet Union was more declarative than functional.76 In Czechoslovakia, 1968 was the first year in which exchanges with capitalist countries exceeded those with socialist states—by a third. And while 1969 followed a similar trend, by the end of 1969 a series of measures had been taken to limit exchanges with non-socialist countries, and these exchanges fell drastically the following year, especially in terms of outward travel.77
While the framework of bilateral and multilateral agreements and the diversity of central and extramural institutes had an impact on exchanges, the aptitude of the institute heads also played a part in steering the direction and determining the intensity of contacts. The influential Czechoslovak microbiologist and politician Ivan Málek, for example, was able to argue in favor of developing cooperation with non-socialist countries as part of ideological competition, which allowed many researchers at his institute to complete fellowships at institutions in Western Europe and North America.78 However, this autonomy had its limits. On the one hand, there were general international and inter-academic agreements that defined the cornerstones of cooperation, including the number of participants. On the other hand, every travel request had to be approved by a higher level of the academy, and the policy of approval depended on political prerogatives (and the financial means of the state).
Travel was not available to everyone, as it had been deemed considered a privilege, especially to countries outside the Eastern Bloc. This mainly stemmed from political reasons, as each request had to be approved by the directors and political authorities. Especially when traveling to the West, socialist scholars had to navigate tightly controlled passport regimes and bureaucratic and often politicized procedures.79 Passports (which were state property) were kept at police stations and had to be requested for each trip (and immediately handed back after the return), which essentially excluded those who were politically suspect or considered likely to defect to the West. It was necessary to substantiate the importance of the travel, and with reference to scientific gains in the case of scientific trips (in the Soviet Union this applied to all travel, including private travel to Eastern Bloc countries).80
In addition, the cost of travel caused problems, as per diems were often so low that they barely covered a fraction of the necessary costs, and it was therefore essential to obtain invitations from abroad, with foreign institutions covering the scholar’s expenses. Even travel within the Eastern Bloc could be financially burdensome, alleviated by institutional funds or often by informal arrangements (staying with friends instead of in hotels, etc.). Finding alternative funding was important because of the general shortage of hard currency (along with the concurrent abundance of non-convertible currency). This issue affected not only academics, but also the economy as a whole. Therefore, especially during the period of intensified non-socialist exchange, the receiving institutions covered the costs of the majority of outgoing fellowships.
In the case of the socialist academies, this led to reciprocal agreements. In order to minimize the transfer of money abroad, there had to be an equal number of outgoing and incoming scholars, although deviations were permitted for large discrepancies in country size, such as between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Moreover, the receiving institution always paid for the scholar’s in-country expenses, while the sending institution paid for their travel. “Reciprocity” (PL: wzajemność; CZ: reciprocita/vzájemnost; SL: vzájomnosť), the term denoting this idea of equal exchange, became the key for understanding socialist academic exchange.81 In contrast to the well-known socialist economic plans, which were designed to be exceeded, exceeding the plan of scholarly exchange was to be avoided, although it was possible with the agreement of all parties. On the other hand, underachieving, i.e., sending too few researchers abroad, could lead to reprimands, as noted by Jan Surman in this volume. This also led to a situation where institutes sent researchers abroad for no apparent reason, simply to meet quotas. While such travel may have been productive, many were more a kind of academic vacation.
Reciprocity agreements, whether considered productive or not, defined the formal framework of scholarly exchange with and within Eastern Bloc countries, and they occupied the administrators whose task it was to fulfill them, especially given the political restrictions and the limited number of people who were permitted to travel abroad. These agreements also shaped the strategies of those who wanted to utilize them for their own (professional or less scholarly) purposes. Although formal, reciprocal relations relied on informal contacts, they also structured the very conditions under which informal contacts could be made.
The prehistory of modern Czech–Polish scholarly relations has often been written through the prism of Slavic contacts within the Habsburg Monarchy.82 While these histories describe the unifying force of anti-Germanism as the glue that held Czechs and Poles together (excluding Slovaks, whose historical ties were bound up with the Hungarian part of the monarchy), border tensions cast a shadow over scholarly contacts after Czechoslovakia and Poland became independent. While institutional cooperation failed repeatedly in the 1920s and 1930s,83 private contacts established before 1918 continued.84 Some even became the basis for post–World War II contacts, helping to reestablish relations in the brief three years before the communist takeover. Some contacts were broken off in the 1950s and 1960s,85 but others continued under changed and more formalized conditions.
After 1947, official academic relations were governed by bilateral agreements, first at the state level and then at the academy level.86 An agreement between the two academies was reached shortly after the inauguration of the PAN in 1953 and formalized at the end of 1955 in an annex to the Intergovernmental Treaty on Cultural Cooperation.87 The agreement was periodically renegotiated and updated. It included the main areas of research to be pursued and the number of scholars to be involved in academic exchanges. It defined topics and problems for cooperation at the level of the institutes, initially in a few selected fields, and expanded with each revision. Information about the work program and the participating scientists was to be sent to the other academy, although in practice both sides often failed to do this on time, and it was repeatedly cited as a problem. The areas of research corresponded to the research objectives of both states but increasingly also followed multilateral socialist agreements, especially within COMECON, although in the 1960s bilateral agreements remained the preferred method of the cooperating parties.88 Later, with more intensive multilateral cooperation and an increasing focus on it from the 1970s onward, this even led to the siphoning off of quotas intended for bilateral exchange. While this volume cannot answer the question of to what extent “socialist integration” was more than just an aspiration, it was certainly taken into account in research planning, as several of the chapters in this book illustrate.
During the socialist period, Czechoslovak–Polish cooperation was characterized by a number of asymmetries. For example, although the reciprocal quota between the ČSAV and PAN continually increased, from 110 weeks in 1958, to 260 weeks in 1965,89 300 in 1971,90 and 500 in 1981,91 the relative size of the two academies meant that the importance of the collaboration was different in each. For ČSAV, PAN was among its most important collaborators throughout the period, whereas for PAN, ČSAV held a mid-level position among its partners. As many of the chapters in this volume show, there was also a symbolic asymmetry, as both Polish and Czechoslovak scholars tended to prefer Western or Soviet partners. This asymmetry was particularly marked after the Warsaw Pact invasion, when Polish scholars had many more opportunities to travel to non-socialist countries than their Czechoslovak comrades. This asymmetry was clear in many areas—for example, Polish books were widely translated and found in Czechoslovak libraries, but Czech and Slovak books were rarely translated into Polish. And like any asymmetry, it should be taken with a grain of salt, as it depends on the fields and disciplines involved in the cooperation. Nevertheless, the Polish side often played a more active role in the negotiations between the ČSAV and PAN—proposing more topics for cooperation, seeking to revise the agreed-upon division and hierarchy of scientific fields for cooperation, and suggesting initiatives such as joint awards and more.
Personal contacts, both within and outside formal structures, were crucial in overcoming institutional asymmetries. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, collegiality and friendship played a key role in fostering collaboration where it was not initially anticipated or supported by institutions. Importantly, these relationships also transcended political ruptures and even generations.92 Focusing on them helps us to consider alternative temporalities to those of political history, which may or may not correspond to scholarly dynamics.
This volume’s seven chapters explore case studies of Czechoslovak–Polish scholarly interactions during the socialist period. To highlight the coexistence of formal, reciprocal relations and informal networks, we focused on disciplines closely tied to politics. This approach allows us to show that—even in fields subject to strict state oversight—there was room for individual initiative. Indeed, such efforts were often essential for effective cross-border cooperation. Reflecting ongoing discussion about scales of historical inquiry, the chapters move from the local level toward a broader, transnational perspective.
Michaela Šmidrkalová explores the entanglements of Czech, Slovak, and Polish historians of science and technology. She focuses on three lesser-known individuals—Juraj Voda, Stanisław Miczulski, and Stanisław Zahradnik—whose regional and national affiliations shaped their scholarly trajectories. Šmidrkalová emphasizes how cross-border scholarly cooperation was often driven by individuals in peripheral institutions who fostered meaningful intellectual exchanges. For these individuals, travel to neighboring countries was an opportunity to engage internationally. All three were pioneers in their fields but were sidelined once the history of science became institutionalized and centralized. Zahradnik, a member of the Polish minority in Czechoslovakia, also faced mistrust from the secret service, which hindered his career.
Jan Surman examines the unsuccessful collaboration between Czechoslovakia and Poland regarding the Scientific-Technological Revolution (STR) during the 1970s. Led by Radovan Richta’s influential team, Czechoslovakia became a central site of STR theorization. Despite the enthusiasm of Polish scholars, particularly young researchers like Lech Zacher, structural mismatches between institutions, Richta’s prioritization of Soviet partners, and the repercussions of the events of 1968 contributed to the growing distance between the two countries. Personal tensions, such as Zacher’s public critique of Soviet–Czechoslovak STR publications, further complicated matters. Ultimately, the breakdown of this collaboration exemplifies how interpersonal trust, political allegiance, and Cold War hierarchies intertwined to restrict intellectual exchange within the socialist bloc.
Luboš Studený and Lukas Becht examine Czechoslovakia and Poland within the transnational network of futures studies. Senior scholars such as Ota Šulc and Andrzej Siciński played pivotal roles in fostering connections through bilateral exchanges, international conferences, and multilateral projects. The chapter discusses three main constellations of cooperation: ideological critique, engagement with global futures studies communities, and institutional collaboration, as exemplified by the Wrocław Center for Prognostic Research (OBP). Despite differences in political climates and national academic priorities, the Czech–Polish network enabled mutual support and information exchange. However, structural and political limitations, including censorship and self-censorship, institutional instability, and martial law in Poland in 1982, restricted the network’s continuity and impact.
Maciej Górny focuses on the intersection of the economy and socialist central planning. His work highlights the shortcomings of centrally planned economies and the rise of Marxist reformism in both countries in response to the inefficiencies of Stalinist economic models. Polish economists, who benefited from a more open intellectual climate after the 1956 political thaw, initiated debates that influenced their Czechoslovak counterparts. Central to the narrative is Ota Šik, whose economic reforms in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s were inspired by, and received critical attention from, Polish economists such as Michał Kalecki and Oskar Lange. Despite the failure of the reform efforts and the suppression of the Prague Spring, the legacy of academic collaboration between the two countries persisted into the 1970s.
Tomáš W. Pavlíček’s chapter explores the evolution of mathematical exchange from the end of World War II to the late socialist period. Using oral histories and archival sources, Pavlíček reveals how personal encounters, such as study visits, seminars, and local mountain conferences, served as vital nodes for scholarly communication. While Polish mathematicians generally had greater international visibility and institutional support (for example, through the Banach Center in Warsaw), Czech scholars such as Eduard Čech and his younger colleague Miroslav Katětov played pivotal roles in transnational cooperation, notably through the Prague Topological Symposia. Overall, Czech–Polish entanglements in mathematics were marked by informal exchanges, in which personal agency often compensated for structural asymmetries in socialist academia. However, informality’s role changed across time—from a basis for formal contacts to a supplement to them.
Kornelia Kończal explores practices of cooperation between Polish and Czechoslovak sociologists. Between 1945 and 1989, the development of sociology in both countries followed similar trajectories, shaped by shared intellectual traditions and later disrupted by Stalinist repression. Although sociology was revived earlier in Poland (1956) than in Czechoslovakia (1964), bilateral cooperation remained limited and structurally asymmetric: Czech and Slovak scholars engaged more actively with Polish sociology than the other way around. The chapter examines these encounters through a praxeological lens, focusing on the everyday practices of researchers within their institutional and ideological contexts. It distinguishes between “apparent activities” and “inspiring interactions,” showing that meaningful exchange often relied on personal initiative. Case studies of Jiří Kolaja and Jan Szczepański illustrate how individual agency could transcend structural constraints.
Doubravka Olšáková’s chapter examines the Pugwash Conferences’ role as a unique transnational channel of science diplomacy and dialogue between Czechoslovakia and Poland. She details how scientists from both countries circumvented rigid state control to influence disarmament and security discussions, particularly through initiatives like the Rapacki Plan for a nuclear-free Central Europe. Czechoslovakia initially led Pugwash efforts in the 1960s, but after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, Poland assumed leadership, hosting key conferences in the 1970s and 1980s, even under martial law. Notable figures, such as František Janouch and Andrei Sakharov, challenged Pugwash to address human rights issues, pushing the organization beyond traditional disarmament dialogue. A turning point occurred at the 1982 Warsaw Pugwash Conference, where scientists met informally with Solidarity opposition figures. The chapter emphasizes the dual roles of scientists as experts and activists, as well as the challenging balance they maintained between fostering East–West dialogue and addressing repression within the Eastern Bloc.
Finally, Simone Turchetti discusses the implications of the ideas expressed in this volume for the history of science, particularly the history of science diplomacy. He argues that including the perspective of socialist countries allows for a more detailed picture of international scientific relations, which have thus far been analyzed through Western European and Anglo-American perspectives. Thus, the volume not only helps us understand the sciences in the Eastern bloc but also the emergence of the global scientific system.
Lukas Becht is a political scientist and historian focusing on the history of future studies, political time, and knowledge production in Central and Eastern Europe. He studied political science, sociology, and philosophy, obtained a master’s degree at the University of Freiburg and interned at the Polish Sejm. In a binational PhD program between LMU Munich and the University of Vienna, he researches scientific futurology in socialist Poland. He is an Associated researcher at RECET, University of Vienna, where he also coordinated the project Economic Collectivism Old and New.
Maciej Górny is a historian specializing in the intellectual history and historiography of Central and Eastern Europe. He holds a PhD (2006) and habilitation (2015) from the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences (IH PAN), where he now serves as a full professor and vice-director. His research explores national stereotypes, Polish–German relations, and Marxist historiography. Górny has led and contributed to several major research projects and is the author of influential works on World War I, historical geography, and the history of historical thought.
Kornelia Kończal is a historian specializing in contemporary European history, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe, France, and Germany. She holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (2017) and serves as Assistant Professor of Public History at Bielefeld University, Germany. She is currently completing her first monograph, Politics of Plunder: How Expropriating German Expellees Helped and Harmed the Postwar Reconstruction of East Central Europe, and editing a volume on Doing Heritage without Heirs? Practices of Cultural Succession in Post-German Spaces..
Doubravka Olšáková is a historian and political scientist, specializing in the history of science and technology and the Cold War. She works currently at the Institute of Political Sciences of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. She is the founding member of the Standing Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy, Division of History of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, deputy editor-in-chief of Centaurus, the journal of the European Society for the History of Science, and a founding member of the Oxford University Press Science, Technology and International Relations series.
Tomáš W. Pavlíček specializes in the social and cultural history of Central Europe, oral history, and the history of science. He earned his PhD through a Czech–German program (LMU Munich–Charles University). As a historian at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences he leads international research on Czech–Polish scholarly networks and has published extensively on science, religion, and memory in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe.
Michaela Šmidrkalová is a historian at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, specializing in twentieth-century Central European history and the history of science. She earned her PhD in Modern History from Charles University in 2015. Her research focuses on scientific institutions, international scholarly exchanges, and the cultural history of technology under socialism.
Luboš Studený is a historian specializing in the late socialist and postsocialist period of Czechoslovakia, with a focus on the history of future studies, postcommunist transformation, cybernetics and historiography theory. He holds a master’s degree from Charles University, where he is currently completing his PhD in modern economic and social history. He has contributed to research on socialist enterprise transformation and Cold War scientific networks.
Jan Surman is a historian specializing in the intellectual and scientific history of Central and Eastern Europe. He earned his PhD in History at the University of Vienna and has held fellowships in Vienna, Moscow, Princeton, and Marburg before joining the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His research explores the intersections of science, language, and politics. He has published widely on multilingualism in academia, the history of positivism, and knowledge circulation, and serves on editorial boards of several international journals in the history of science.
ČSAV
Československá akademie věd (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences)
MÚA AV ČR
Masarykův ústav a Archiv Akademie věd České republiky (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
PAN
Polska Akademia Nauk (Polish Academy of Sciences)