The East-West Divide in Czechoslovak Sciences after 1968: Political Regulations and Their Fictional Representations

OATES-INDRUCHOVÁ, Libora. The East-West Divide in Czechoslovak Sciences after 1968: Political Regulations and Their Fictional Representations. In Conflict and Community: Transatlantic Relations during the Cold War, U. of Tampere. 2008.

Basic information

• Original name: The East-West Divide in Czechoslovak Sciences after 1968: Political Regulations and Their Fictional Representations
• Name in Czech: The East-West Divide in Czechoslovak Sciences after 1968: Political Regulations and Their Fictional Representations
• Name (in English): The East-West Divide in Czechoslovak Sciences after 1968: Political Regulations and Their Fictional Representations
• Authors: OATES-INDRUCHOVÁ, Libora.
• Edition: Conflict and Community: Transatlantic Relations during the Cold War, U. of Tampere, 2008.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Keywords in English: Conference presentation
• Tags: Conference presentation
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

Czechoslovak academic institutions established numerous professional links and research trip agreements with Western countries on both sides of the Atlantic during the political thaw of the 1960s. However, in the years following the Soviet-lead invasion in August 1968, termed as “Normalization”, the fledgling cooperation was discontinued and replaced with corresponding research agreements with East-Bloc countries. The paper will discuss other systematic measures to orient Czechoslovak academic community away from the “West” and toward the “East” that followed. One of them was a dualistic academic language that expressed the divide in developing more or less two sets of expressions (a practice the Czech dissident Petr Fidelius calls “the principle of the great axe”): one to denote theoretical concepts developed in the “West’ and the other those developed in the “East”. Drawing on a case study of archival materials on Czechoslovak science policies between 1968 and 1989, I will document how the different expressions indicated more than linguistic distinctions between theoretical approaches and carried also moral judgments to label the morally corrupt “West” and morally pure “East”. In the last part of the paper, I will illustrate how these judgments pronounced on the whole political system and its science could then extend to its individual representatives in cultural representations--not unlike 1950s propaganda art, albeit more subtly. A striking example of this indoctrination is a best-selling novel set in a research institute and published for the first time in the perestroika period, in which international researchers ranging from Soviet to American are presented and their characterization exactly matches the alliances and antagonisms of contemporary political propaganda. If the East-West divide in scientific cooperation was never complete in reality, its illusion was scrupulously maintained in representations of science relations for public consumption and in the politicized vocabulary of science.

Abstract (in Czech)

Czechoslovak academic institutions established numerous professional links and research trip agreements with Western countries on both sides of the Atlantic during the political thaw of the 1960s. However, in the years following the Soviet-lead invasion in August 1968, termed as “Normalization”, the fledgling cooperation was discontinued and replaced with corresponding research agreements with East-Bloc countries. The paper will discuss other systematic measures to orient Czechoslovak academic community away from the “West” and toward the “East” that followed. One of them was a dualistic academic language that expressed the divide in developing more or less two sets of expressions (a practice the Czech dissident Petr Fidelius calls “the principle of the great axe”): one to denote theoretical concepts developed in the “West’ and the other those developed in the “East”. Drawing on a case study of archival materials on Czechoslovak science policies between 1968 and 1989, I will document how the different expressions indicated more than linguistic distinctions between theoretical approaches and carried also moral judgments to label the morally corrupt “West” and morally pure “East”. In the last part of the paper, I will illustrate how these judgments pronounced on the whole political system and its science could then extend to its individual representatives in cultural representations--not unlike 1950s propaganda art, albeit more subtly. A striking example of this indoctrination is a best-selling novel set in a research institute and published for the first time in the perestroika period, in which international researchers ranging from Soviet to American are presented and their characterization exactly matches the alliances and antagonisms of contemporary political propaganda. If the East-West divide in scientific cooperation was never complete in reality, its illusion was scrupulously maintained in representations of science relations for public consumption and in the politicized vocabulary of science.

Abstract (in English)

Czechoslovak academic institutions established numerous professional links and research trip agreements with Western countries on both sides of the Atlantic during the political thaw of the 1960s. However, in the years following the Soviet-lead invasion in August 1968, termed as “Normalization”, the fledgling cooperation was discontinued and replaced with corresponding research agreements with East-Bloc countries. The paper will discuss other systematic measures to orient Czechoslovak academic community away from the “West” and toward the “East” that followed. One of them was a dualistic academic language that expressed the divide in developing more or less two sets of expressions (a practice the Czech dissident Petr Fidelius calls “the principle of the great axe”): one to denote theoretical concepts developed in the “West’ and the other those developed in the “East”. Drawing on a case study of archival materials on Czechoslovak science policies between 1968 and 1989, I will document how the different expressions indicated more than linguistic distinctions between theoretical approaches and carried also moral judgments to label the morally corrupt “West” and morally pure “East”. In the last part of the paper, I will illustrate how these judgments pronounced on the whole political system and its science could then extend to its individual representatives in cultural representations--not unlike 1950s propaganda art, albeit more subtly. A striking example of this indoctrination is a best-selling novel set in a research institute and published for the first time in the perestroika period, in which international researchers ranging from Soviet to American are presented and their characterization exactly matches the alliances and antagonisms of contemporary political propaganda. If the East-West divide in scientific cooperation was never complete in reality, its illusion was scrupulously maintained in representations of science relations for public consumption and in the politicized vocabulary of science.