Call for Articles for a
thematic section in Studia
Historiae Scientiarum
2021, guest edited by
Daria Petushkova and Jan
Surman
With the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the
political transformation
that followed, Central and
Eastern European scholars
found themselves facing a
rapid transition on many
levels. Some disciplines,
approaches and theories
were abandoned, and new
ones, appropriated from
the “West” took their
place. Previous forms of
academic communication
changed - independent
journals and publishing
houses mushroomed,
replacing the so far
supervised and centralised
system. At the same time,
not only scholarly
virtues, but also forms of
academic sociability
changed, and a new
scholarly persona
emerged.
This process happened
with different intensities
in different countries,
but everywhere under the
impression of the
beginning of a new epoch,
in which the norms of the
“Western” academia
prevailed. Thus we propose
to call this process a
“selective
Westernisation”.
“Selective” should point
to the fact that this
process varied markedly
across the post-Soviet
space: what was
appropriated in one
country, did not
necessarily have to be
appropriated in another.
And, of course, there was
no “Western academia”
either. Appropriation was
mostly connected to
specific countries (esp.
France, (Western) Germany
or the US), but also
resulted in creating an
image of an ideal,
coherent “Western”
academia.
