Eastern European Studies in the West as Seen from Eastern Europe

Abstract

I appreciate greatly the opportunity to address this Conference attended by several hundred Slavists and specialists on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is a rare honour to speak to so many distinguished Western scholars who by virtue of their intellect, vigour and determination have secured for themselves a prominent place in their own countries and who now have wide international recognition. I am, of course, not a specialist in your field. I presume that by inviting me here you are interested, even at the risk of distortions stemming from my ignorance, to have the opinion of an outsider. I take it that this is my task, to present to you a critical evaluation of your work, precisely because I am not a member of your community and as such I am less likely to accept your assumptions and follow your methodologies. I am addressing you as a scholar from Eastern Europe. I have to emphasize that I am using this term as meaning exclusively the socialist countries. For Eastern Europe, as defined in the West, is a political and not a geographical concept. It includes Poland which is located at the very centre of the European continent as well as the German Democratic Republic which, until 1945, was culturally very much a part of Western Europe. At the same time I have to stress that I am addressing you strictly as a private person. I have no authority to speak on behalf of anybody. What I have to say is based exclusively on my own experience as a person familiar with the development of social sciences on both sides of the ideological line, dividing East and West, including the work which is being carried on at the Canadian universities where I have taught and where I have numerous friends. I speak to you primarily as a sociologist interested in trying to discover the universal rules of societal life and human behaviour.