Getting used to Conformism: On the Attitudes of Czech Scientists Towards the Totalitarian Regime (in Literary Representations)

The issue of the destruction of the idea of academic freedom and the “betrayal of intellectuals”, i.e. the complete appropriation and ideologization of the academic space by political control mechanisms, remains a topic of interest for historians, ethicists and publicists. For the history of Czech science, the personal motivations of scientists who were forced to renounce their own beliefs seem to be less significant. Instead, greater importance should be placed on the enormity of the devastation caused in the sphere of research development caused by reducing the methodological and theoretical space to one theory and method – in a simplified way derived from Marxist philosophy. Such motives gain the weight in the literary representations of the scientific community. In the reality of regime repression, in which violence covered all areas of life and did not bypass any social group, the scientific community was located on the margin of the mainstream of topics discussed by dissident and exile writers, but it appeared in their texts, especially, although not exclusively, in the works of authors with professional experience in academic work, who play an often-complicated game with both elements of autobiography and the conventions of roman à clef.

Article Title	Type	Size
porownania.35.03.GAWARECKA	[pdf]	[269 KB]