Abstract
Adam Schaff was at the front of the ideological campaign organized in post-war Poland during the wave of Stalinization. By attempting to adapt the Soviet “model” of public discussion to Polish academia, Schaff wanted to teach the representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School of logic how to lead a scholarly debate. Schaff ’s group consisted of young scholars from the Instytut Kształcenia Kadr Naukowych [Institute for Education of Scientific Staff] and with critical reviews on the works of Polish logicians they tried to force their opponents to change the basic principles of their academic practice under the new circumstances. Nevertheless, Schaff ’s project failed since, unlike Soviet scholars, the participants in the discussion referred to different academic virtues that made the adaptation of the Soviet model of public discussion impossible.
Highlights
I still cannot get used to the role of an important person who has to make daily decisions on issues that are importantHistory of scientific knowledge to other people
By attempting to adapt the Soviet “model” of public discussion to Polish academia, Schaff wanted to teach the representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School of logic how to lead a scholarly debate
Particular autonomy of a scholarship holder, conditional upon following vague slogans of people’s unity, “progressive ideas,” and friendship with the Soviet Union shaped a space both for the reconstruction of the inter-war academic traditions destroyed by World War II, and for a certain optimism concerning the opportunity to use the new conditions to organize post-war Polish academia in a “more progressive way” than in the Polish Republic before 1939
Summary
I still cannot get used to the role of an important person who has to make daily decisions on issues that are important. The argument of my article is that a special form of public discussion –one that implied public self-criticism of those who became the subjects of public criticism – was an integral part of the Soviet ‘model’ that Schaff “failure” of the project to adapt to the new virtues of the academic discussion resulted in the institutions created by Stalinism becoming bastions of resistance to the principles of “Stalinism” during the wave of de-Stalinisation
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