CALL FOR PAPERS: The Humanities and Natural Sciences in the Late Stalin Era

 CALL FOR PAPERS: The Humanities and Natural Sciences in the Late Stalin Era

The CUPOLA project (Culture’s Politics Under Authoritarian Rule: Soviet Civilizationism and the Case of the Humanities During the Stalin Era, 2024–2028) invites chapter proposals for the book project The Humanities and Natural Sciences in the Late Stalin Era. The deadline for abstracts is May 15, 2025, with notifications of acceptance sent by May 23, 2025. We invite abstracts for book chapters that offer novel perspectives on the humanities and natural sciences during the late Stalin era. To apply, please submit an abstract (maximum 500 words) and a CV (maximum two pages) to elina.viljanen@helsinki.fi.

Research on Stalin-era humanities and natural sciences has primarily focused on the political and ideological control exerted by the state. However, there is a scarcity of studies exploring the degrees of autonomy and submission within these fields. To address this gap, we propose examining the political strategies employed by scholars in Soviet humanities and natural sciences in their efforts to gain relative autonomy from Soviet political control. This approach is grounded in the understanding that, for political instrumentalization to be effective, it cannot entirely eliminate scholarly autonomy, as scholarship must remain useful for political purposes.

Our project seeks to explore the intersections between the political, cultural, and philosophical aspects of Soviet humanities and natural sciences. Our premise is that the political aspects of humanities and sciences are not reducible only to the active role they assume through their actors and ideas in conventional state driven politics. To address and test this premise, we introduce the methodological concept of culture’s politics, which refers to the struggle for power to define and govern one’s own cultural existence. In the context of the humanities and natural sciences, it is essential to ask: To what extent did scholars under Stalinism experience relative autonomy? What did autonomy entail, and why is this phenomenon significant? How should we conceptualize the late Stalin era in scholarship, particularly from the perspectives of the history of ideas and philosophy of science?

A seminar to discuss preliminary book chapters will be held at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki on October 2–3, 2025. Online participation will be available, and the deadline for submitting draft chapters is September 22nd, 2025.

We kindly ask you to forward this Call for Papers to any individuals or groups who may be interested in contributing to this book project. For more information about the CUPOLA Project, please visit the ARGIH pages: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/russian-east-european-and-eurasian-intellectual-history/news/call-for-papers