The article examines the experience of interaction between Soviet historians and Polish and Czechoslovak colleagues in the first half of the 1950s. The reason for this communication were the attempts to compile the history of these countries. The aim of the article is to compare the contacts of Soviet historians with Polish and Czechoslovak colleagues and to identify commonalities and differences in the interaction between them. As part of the study, scenarios for this interaction were identified and common and different features of cooperation were determined. It was also concluded that there were different models of building a dialogue/monologue with colleagues from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Polish scientists not only did not allow Soviet authors to “manage” their field, but also actively criticized and made significant remarks about their Soviet colleagues. Czechoslovak historians, on the contrary, compromised, either agreeing with Soviet criticism or simply ignoring it. Similar features of narrative construction were identified, focused around common «places of memory». Both Polish and Czechoslovak historians were offered the same events, which were to become the foundation for the construction of a «common past». These, from the official point of view, included the European revolutions of 1848–1849, the First Russian Revolution of 1905–1907, the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Second World War (sometimes referred to as the Great Patriotic War). When examining the work of their colleagues, Soviet scientists used the same rhetorical techniques which testify to the Marxist canon that had developed in the USSR. Its striking marker is close attention to the problem of periodization of history, its division into formations, as well as reflection on the criteria for changing formations and their connection with specific historical material.
Soviet historiography; Slavic studies; Sovietization; socialist science; Institute of Slavic Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences.