The 220th Anniversary of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the Victorious 1945: A Scenario of Celebration in the Sociocultural Context of the Era

Abstract

In June 1945, the 220th anniversary of the USSR Academy of Sciences was celebrated on a grand scale. An academic anniversary is a polysyllabic commemorative action that can be described in diverse contexts. The authors focused directly on the holiday scenario in the corporate-ritual dimension, as well as its communicative potentialities. The source of the research was published and unpublished clerical materials of the USSR Academy of Sciences, periodicals and popular science publications, ego-sources of participants in the science festival. The methodological optics of the article consisted of developments in the field of intellectual history, the social history of science, and the history of memory. In the festive scenario, the authors identified the following components: 1) actually scientific, 2) ritual and welcoming, 3) concert and entertainment, and 4) banquet. During the study, it was concluded that the scenario for celebrating the 220th anniversary of the USSR Academy of Sciences is multilayered and at the same time integral and indivisible. It organically combined heterogeneous social entities - power sharpened by rigid forms of social engineering and repressive regulation, scientists trying to remove themselves from excommunication from pre-revolutionary and world science, foreign guests who became their own for a short historical moment. The scenario of the anniversary correlates with the contextual background of the anniversary celebrations, which was distinguished by a special atmosphere of expectation of a new life after the Great Patriotic War. In the communicative plan, jubilee celebrations are considered as practices of intensive communication. The conclusion is made that the idea of a unified world science will be revived for a short moment.