The report of Ivan Kostiushko to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the reform of the Institute of the Slavic Studies in 1968

Abstract

The publication opens a cycle of studies about the history of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and of the Russian Slavic studies in the second half of 1940s–1960s in general. This paper focuses on the report of the Soviet historian of Poland Ivan Kostiushko on the project to transform the Institute of Slavic Studies into an Institute of European Socialist Countries. The main idea of the Kostiushko’s report reached beyond the discussion about the reform of the Institute of Slavic Studies, concerning principle points of transformation of the historical studies in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Kostiushko’s proposition was rejected by governing bodies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Academy of Sciences as well as by historians, who specialized in Slavic studies. Kostiushko’s report, however, presented significant issues about ways and forms of the evolution of historical studies and Slavic studies in the USSR in the 1960s.