1. Introduction
Marx and Engels were partisans in philosophy from start to finish, they were able to detect deviations from materialism …. The “realists” including the “positivists” … are a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question. The attempt to escape from these two basic trends in philosophy is nothing but “conciliatory quackery.” (Lenin [1909] Reference Lenin1977, 339–340)
Vladimir Lenin wrote these lines in the reading halls of the British Museum during his trip to London, one of the world centers of industrialization and the exploitation of the working class. In his famous work Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909), Lenin fiercely criticized “the official professors” for their pursuit of a “non-partisan” and “non-political” science, which served merely as a tool to uphold the oppressive political regime. He claimed that “partisanship” must be embraced as both a political and epistemological ideal.
Partisanship is a concept with a complex and contradictory history. In one of his early texts, Lenin argued:
Political indifference is a political satiety. … A hungry person will always be “partisan” (partiiny) in the matter of a piece of bread. “Indifference and unconcern” towards a piece of bread … means that a person … is firmly attached to the “party” of the well-fed. Non-partisanship (bespartiinost’) in bourgeois society is only a hypocritical … expression of belonging to the party of the well-fed … to the party of the exploiters. (Lenin [1905] Reference Lenin1968, 138)Footnote 1
In this way, Lenin established a comprehensive framework for applying the concept of “partisanship” (partiinost’) within revolutionary praxis. Being deeply involved in the philosophical and political debates on the concept of “party” (e.g. von Beyme Reference Beyme, Brunner, Conze and Koselleck1978), Lenin meant by “partisanship” something very similar to the German parteiisch, which, depending on the context, could be translated as “not neutral,” “partial,” or even “socially engaged,” and implied a reference to a (social) group being represented (Carpi Reference Carpi2021, 52–55; Sabrow Reference Sabrow2001, 139, 150). In this regard, partisanship was not confined to a formal party membership; rather, it represented a perspective that sought to analyze reality from the standpoint of the oppressed classes.
However, in political practice, there were specific parties that were engaged in the struggle against political enemies. The usage of the term “partisanship” clearly reflected the political needs and interests of those who invoked it. In this way, Lenin’s young combatant, Josef Jughashvili (later known as Stalin), criticized the “non-partisan freaks” (bespartiinye chudaki), describing non-partisanship as merely a “fashion” among the Russian intelligentsia. He argued that this stance represented a failure to choose the “right” side in the political struggle, especially as the Bolsheviks emerged as the most radical revolutionary party (Stalin [1912] Reference Stalin1946, 230). The accusation of “non-partisanship” served not only to point out an epistemic vice but also to push the opponent away from the “correct” course of historical development. The general idea of mobilizing the “good” forces against the “bad” made “partisanship” a very flexible and broadly applicable tool in the political struggle.
The establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship after the October Revolution in 1917, as well as the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922, made the new “proletarian state” a large laboratory for the state-run promotion of partisanship in science and scholarship. Under the Stalinist dictatorship, the quest for “partisanship” developed into an important tool of political repression within academia. Many scientists and scholars who claimed to maintain their “non-political” and “non-ideological” attitudes towards science fell victim to the Soviet regime (e.g. Perchjonok Reference Perchjonok and Galina1995). The outcomes of World War II shaped the conditions for the expansion of Soviet dominance over science and scholarship to spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Not all scientists and scholars had to become party members, but all of them were to be forced to conduct “partisan” science and scholarship (e.g. Connelly Reference Connelly2000).
At the theoretical level, partisanship was still conceptualized as a kind of standpoint theory and a militant opposition to “abstract rationality” (e.g. Vostrikov Reference Vostrikov1948, 5). Nevertheless, under the conditions of communist-led dictatorships, this concept started to be strongly associated with “conformity with the party line” (Yurchak Reference Yurchak2006, 46). The necessity of conducting scientific research from the “point of view of the working class,” along with the idea that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union represented the vanguard of the “world proletariat,” implied both the leading role of communist parties in academic issues and the dominant position of Soviet communists in the socialist bloc. Of course, in practice, the story of the socialist quest for an “ideologically correct science” was much more complex (e.g. Gordin et al. Reference Gordin, Grunden, Walker, Wang and Walker2003, 35–37, 39–43). The roles of academics and party officials in determining how partisan science and scholarship should work changed significantly over time (e.g. Pollock Reference Pollock2009), while Soviet officials had very limited opportunities to directly influence science and scholarship in socialist countries (e.g. Connelly and Grüttner Reference Connelly and Grüttner2005). Either way, this logic became the main brand of “Soviet science” that was supposed to be disseminated as an “alternative” academic model (Fortescue Reference Fortescue1986, 4–14).
The discourse of “partisanship” in science and scholarship is by no means unique to the socialist bloc. Debates on “partial” and “partisan” knowledge rooted in the early modern social theories (e.g. Knights Reference Knights2005) became a central issue, for example, in movements like late twentieth-century feminism, which directly challenged the idea of “universal” and “abstract” objectivity in science (Haraway Reference Haraway1988). In recent scholarship, the notion of “partisan knowledge” has gained increasing relevance, especially in the context of debates about the relationship between science and activism regarding highly political issues such as climate change (Staley Reference Staley2019). The repressive and expansionist features of the Soviet state played an important role in both the victimization and heroization of the idea of “non-political science and scholarship,” creating fertile ground for the critique of partisanship. From the very creation of the Soviet state to the present, references to the history of communist regimes have remained central to public and scholarly debates on the possibility of politically neutral or partisan science and scholarship. The development of the principle of partisanship under the socialist regimes has often been portrayed as a prime example of the harmful “politization” of academia (e.g. Staley Reference Staley, Epple, Imhausen and Müller2020, 357–362; Burston Reference Burston2020, 129–156).
It is not my ambition to directly contribute to this debate. Nevertheless, the approach of this article will question the basic categories that shape a dualistic vison of opposed attitudes towards the issue of partisanship. My point is not to deal with the definitions and concepts of partisanship but to focus on the concrete practice of partisanship. My core question is not how partisanship was conceptualized, but how it “worked” in concrete political and social contexts and what the preconditions of this “working” were. In this regard, my approach will contrast with, while also building on, established historiographical approaches to examining science and scholarship under Soviet-dominated socialist regimes.
A significant part of the scholarship habitually focuses on the history of ideas promoted by the Soviet regime or examines the institutional aspects of rebuilding academia in accordance with the “Soviet model” (Connelly Reference Connelly2000; Sabrow Reference Sabrow2001; Connelly and Grüttner Reference Connelly and Grüttner2005, 185–212; Hübner Reference Hübner1992; Ash Reference Ash2010, 34–40; Olšáková Reference Olšáková2012; Stobiecki Reference Stobiecki2013). Meanwhile, scholars drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of “field” and “symbolic capital” have successfully developed a new materialist perspective on cultural and academic life in Central and Eastern Europe (e.g. Zarycki Reference Zarycki2022). Ideological campaigns against scholars and scientists have been productively examined as a form of staging, or more generally as performance, organized under Soviet domination (Kojevnikov Reference Kojevnikov1998; Sasse Reference Sasse2001).
In this article, I intend to shift the focus from ideas, institutions, materialist backgrounds of competition in the “academic field,” and performative practices to the praxeological aspects of applying partisanship to (re-)shaping both academic and political reality, as well as its role as an instrument of social inclusion and exclusion. Methodologically, this article is informed by recent trends in historical and political epistemology, which aim not only to historicize ideas but also to examine the constellation of virtues, habits, conventions, norms, and political attitudes that shape how knowledge is produced (Daston Reference Daston, Chandler, Davidson and Harootunian1994; Cain, Kleeberg, and Surman Reference Cain, Kleeberg and Surman2019; Vogelmann Reference Vogelmann2022). Among the theoretical frameworks of historical epistemology, the concept of “moral economy” will play a central role in my article. This scholarship examines the “stabilization” of scholarly communities through the establishment of norms that enable the development of a shared “common sense” (Daston Reference Daston1995). This perspective builds on a sociological and anthropological concept of morality that refers to the mechanisms of creating the normative foundations of scholarly and scientific practice.
I propose to examine “partisanship” not as an idea or a theory, but as a virtue (Daston and Galison Reference Daston and Galison2007, 39–42; Pleshkov and Surman Reference Pleshkov and Surman2021; Paul Reference Paul2022; Mulsow Reference Mulsow2022, 224–236; Engberts Reference Engberts2022; Kuang and Paul Reference Kuang and Paul2025; Paul Reference Paul2025) that had to be cultivated and practiced under the conditions of Soviet domination in Central and Eastern Europe. Following the logic of political epistemology, I assume that the example of partisanship is well suited to overcoming the historiographical division between “purely” epistemic or academic virtues and political ones. In this regard, the article contrasts with the scholarship of “virtue.” Drawing on the praxeological approach (Bohnsack Reference Bohnsack2017; Kleeberg Reference Kleeberg2019), I intend to demonstrate the plurality of ways in which partisanship could “work” within various “moral economies” established under Soviet domination. This focus emphasizes the use and instrumentalization of the quasi-moral authority of virtue, rather than its role in knowledge production. “Virtuousness” had to be constantly performed, proved and checked. The practice of this “proving” and “checking” in regard to partisanship is the central focus of my study.
This article will concentrate on two figures who gained considerable prominence within the socialist bloc – the Marxist philosopher Arnošt Kolman (1892–Reference Kolman1979) and his younger colleague, Adam Schaff (1913–2006). Born under Habsburg rule, Kolman and Schaff, due to differences in age and place of birth (Prague and Lviv, respectively), experienced the transformations of the interwar period very differently. Nevertheless, both owed their careers to Stalinism. Having received their training in the Soviet Union, they became missionaries of the project of state socialism in other socialist countries – Czechoslovakia and Poland – and participated in the cruel ideological struggle against the opponents of the “partisan truth” in science, which (at least in Kolman’s case) had tragic consequences for those they targeted on the “scientific front.”
Their loyalty to the virtue of “partisanship” and their status as masters of “partisan science” serve as a starting point for this essay. Their active political and academic engagement in both the Soviet Union (albeit in various forms) and two other socialist countries makes their cases eloquent in terms of reflecting differences in scholarship practiced in various countries under Soviet domination. Most importantly, their career trajectories illustrate a crucial point: Neither loyalty to the party line nor political support from the party leadership were a guarantee for permanent academic success in these countries. Their practice of partisanship did not secure their positions on the Olympus of Soviet-run Marxist science. At certain stages, both were excluded from the consensus of “partisan science” and were harshly criticized for being “non-partisan” in their academic work.
Although extensive biographies of Kolman and Schaff have not yet been written, a considerable number of informative publications provide readers with guidance regarding their intellectual development and personal lives (Kovaly Reference Kovaly1974, 35–64, 101–119; Kuryła Reference Kuryła2018; Knapík Reference Knapík1999; Gordin Reference Gordin2017; Jarzyńska Reference Jarzyńska2024). However, this article is not about Kolman and Schaff themselves. Their engaged struggle for partisanship, followed by the official assertion of their “non-partisanship,” provides us with valuable material on how partisanship “worked” in various contexts of state socialism and how this “working” evolved over time. Most importantly, their stories illustrate how the norms and conventions of “Soviet science” could be instrumentalized against their main propagators. Thus, based on the cases of Kolman and Schaff, this article aims to examine more general patterns of practicing scholarship under Soviet dominance in the varied contexts of socialist Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union.
2. The zealot of “partisanship”: Arnošt Kolman and the fight against “non-political” science
“In my scientific works … I have never said anything that does not correspond to reality. In my scientific works, I have not carried out any wrecking directives … I have strictly distinguished between my wrecking work and my scientific work” (Kolman Reference Kolman1931, 73). In this way, Arnošt Kolman quoted the words of Leonid Ramzin (1887–1948), a Soviet engineer who was accused of “wrecking activities” and sentenced to death during the famous Industrial Party Trial (1930) conducted under early Stalinism (Graham Reference Graham1993, 257–261). In his writings, Kolman did his best to expose the “non-political” character of Ramzin’s scientific work:
Perhaps, there is no need to prove once again all the inconsistency and nonsense of the opinion that the theoretical work of wreckers-practitioners (praktiki-vrediteli) can remain untouched by the poison of [their] wrecking activity; that such thing as a science, which is “free” from politics [and] from the worldview of the scientist, exists; [such thing as a] pure, “objective,” classless science [exists], [a science] which somehow miraculously escaped the common fate of this world to be sharply divided into two camps that find themselves in an irreconcilable class struggle [against each other]. (Kolman Reference Kolman1931, 73)
Kolman’s attack on “non-political” knowledge and “classless science” cannot be seen separately from the context of the show trials.Footnote 2 The uncompromising struggle against a “non-partisan” science was an integral part of the Stalinist style of re-educating scholars and scientists (along with all citizens) whose “non-partisanship” had been tolerated during the formative years of the Soviet state. In this regard, Kolman’s quasi-moral indignation about the corruptness of Ramzin fitted perfectly into the “holistic” agenda of Stalinism aimed at changing the basic virtues of Soviet scholars and scientists. When contributing to this program, Kolman showed no mercy to the “enemies of the Soviet state” and claimed that “as design engineers, economic engineers, they were complete wreckers, agents of French imperialism, as well as [agents] of the former ‘domestic’ (otechestvennye) factory owners and landowners” (Kolman Reference Kolman1931, 73).
Arnošt Kolman was born in 1892 in Prague, then an important imperial center of the Habsburg monarchy. From his early student years, he was interested in both philosophy and sciences (especially mathematics and physics). Prague around 1900 was a special place to develop these kinds of interests. Besides profiting from the flourishing philosophical milieu in Prague (e.g. Mácha Reference Mácha1989), Kolman could visit the lectures of the most prominent scientists and later claimed to have attended the lectures of Albert Einstein during his “Bohemian period” (Gordin Reference Gordin2020, 241–249). During the First World War, Kolman was captured by the Russian Imperial Army. Later, he joined the Russian revolutionary movement. In his memoirs, Kolman put a special emphasis on his relations with Lenin and deep engagement with the reforging of Soviet science and scholarship under Bolshevik rule. The Communist Academy, the State Scientific Commission of the People’s Commissariat of Education, the Institute of the Red Professorship: It is difficult to find a big revolutionary project that went without Kolman’s participation (Kovaly Reference Kovaly1972, 337–338).
Having received the degree of “Doctor of Philosophic Sciences” in the Soviet Union, Kolman took seriously the universalist ambition of Marxism-Leninism and devotedly struggled to reform another field of his interest, mathematics. Among other ideological campaigns, Kolman was deeply involved in one of the most famous in Soviet science, known as “Luzin’s case.” Nikolai Luzin (1882–1937) was one of the central figures of the so-called Moscow School of the Theory of Functions (Luzin Reference Luzin [Lusin]1912). Due to Luzin’s idealistic sympathies in philosophy (e.g. Ford Reference Ford1998; Graham and Kantor Reference Graham and Kantor2009), the final destruction of his school became an inevitability,Footnote 3 and Kolman became a central figure in this story.
The archival materials contain a denunciation against Luzin’s school that Kolman addressed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In his letter (which was marked as “secret”), Kolman’s argument centered on the “abstract” character of the scientific works of Luzin, who, according to him, “was bragging about that fact that he ‘has never solved any concrete equation.’” The fact that Luzin was, in Kolman’s view, “of no use” to the Soviet government showed, according to him, the “corrupt” nature of Luzin as a person and exposed his potentiality for treason. Along with the references to Luzin’s platonic sympathies, Kolman claimed: “It should be emphasized that Luzin is closely connected to the most prominent French mathematician [Émile] Borel, an active employee of the French Military. When visiting Paris in 1929, Luzin was a guest at the home of Borel” (Demidov and Levshin Reference Demidov and Levshin1999, 18). In this way, Kolman demonstrated that not being “partisan” in mathematics had direct consequences for Luzin’s “morality,” since it irreversibly led him to cooperation with other “enemies” of the Soviet Union and state treason as the deepest point of “moral degradation.”
It is most likely that Kolman stood behind an anonymous article published in July 1936 in the official press organ Pravda (Levin Reference Levin1990) in which the “righteous indignation” concerning Luzin’s “moral corruption” reached its culmination:
The full member of the Academy of Sciences, Luzin, could have become an honest Soviet scientist like many from the old generation. He did not want it; he, Luzin, remained an enemy, counting on the power of social mimicry, on the impenetrability of the mask he put on himself. … It will not work out, Mr. Luzin! The Soviet scientific community tears off the mask of a conscientious scientist from you and you appear naked [and] miserable to the outside world, [you] who allegedly stand up for “pure science” and sell the interests of science, trading it for the sake of your former masters, the current masters of fascistic science (fashizirovannaja nauka). (Kolman [?] Reference Kolman1936a: 2)
Of course, one can interpret this kind of discourse as a purely rhetorical instruments of defeating opponents. Meanwhile, I find the metaphor of “tearing off the mask of a conscientious scientist” characteristic even beyond the rhetorical aspects of this issue. Without sincere acceptance of “partisanship,” i.e. without changing the basic virtues that constitute the academic ethos, one could not become a “good Soviet scientist” even though he or she showed loyalty to the Soviet regime. In this way, Kolman consistently tried to “prove” that the vice of “non-partisanship” led to complete “moral degradation.”
Kolman is also present in the story of another prominent scandal of “Stalinist science” (Gordin Reference Gordin2008) – the rise of the Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko and the destruction of Soviet genetics (Gordin Reference Gordin2012). When claiming to develop Lamarckism instead of Mendelian genetics, Lysenko tried to show that the Marxist principle of radical changes in the milieu could influence not only social relations but also agricultural entities. At some point, Lysenko’s theory reached a stage at which supporting it became a necessary precondition of “partisanship.” Kolman’s academic attacks were focused on the mathematical and statistical data that was supposed to prove the heredity of certain traits in the cultivation of various sorts of peas. In his article “The Perversion of Mathematics in the Service of Mendelism,” he accused the geneticists of manipulating the data in order to give their approaches the impression of scientific credibility. Considering the struggle against genetics as a part of the partisan war against “fascist biology” and eugenics (Kolman Reference Kolman1936b), Kolman argued that mathematics had become an instrument of enemy ideology and was being instrumentalized for serving a “wrong ideology” (Kolman Reference Kolman1939, Reference Kolman1940).Footnote 4
Against the backdrop of Stalinist terror and the radical reconstruction of academia, the virtue of “partisanship” became an important instrument in breaking the last barriers between science and political leadership and pushing those who opposed it out of academia. All scholars and scientists were to reckon with the possibility of getting a denunciation against themselves like that written by Kolman. This atmosphere contributed to making partisanship a crucial criterion of self-proving and the proving of others as being a “good Soviet scholar or scientist.” Those who claimed to be partisan were also not safe in face of the repression; one could always be accused of “insincerity” or ideological biases, which made partisanship a kind of emanation of the will of the political leadership. In any case, Kolman’s devotion to the virtue of partisanship, along with his aspiration to be a missionary and fight vices, made the rapid rise of his academic career possible (Gordin Reference Gordin2017, 326–335).
The Stalinist terror did affect Kolman’s family. His brother and the brothers of his third wife were arrested and some of them executed in the Stalinist camps. Nevertheless, Kolman not only survived the war (part of which he spent in the evacuation in Almaty), but also was able to arrange his transition back to Prague in 1945 (Ilizarov Reference Ilizarov1998). Having come to Czechoslovakia, Kolman liked to emphasize his special status among Czech communists (Kolman Reference Kolman1982a, 220–226). He was one of only a few Czech communist scholars who claimed to have direct contact with Lenin and could represent himself as an “old Bolshevik.” Under the conditions of the growing dependence from the Soviet Union, Kolman seemed to be part of a unique cadre who had a deep knowledge of the Soviet academic and political realities. His virtuousness in terms of Soviet science was a good precondition for him becoming a teaching fellow at the Party School and one of the central ideological advisers of the communist leadership (Kopeček Reference Kopeček2009, 87–88).
In this role, Kolman got the opportunity to visit international congresses and to continue his struggle against the “non-political” science as a bastion of reaction at the international level. In this regard, the International Congress of Philosophy that took place in Amsterdam in 1948 brought Kolman an international “celebrity.” When developing his previous discourse, Kolman claimed: “The fetishization of ‘pure science’ to which the ‘logical positivists’ are praying (which also means death to any science) has no firm ground. It is phantoms above a seething volcano that will bury them along with the order of inhuman exploitation, while the world inevitably approaches the East [i.e. Communism]” (Kolman Reference Kolman1948, 647). As part of this crusade and quest for a true humanism, Kolman accused all those whom he considered “logical positivists,” including the philosopher Bertrand Russell, of being agents of Western imperialism, which was, for him, a logical consequence of their scholarly and “moral” degradation (Kolman Reference Kolman1948, 647–648).
There are various accounts of how Russell reacted to Kolman’s attack (Hook Reference Hook1949, 265–268; Gellner [1958] Reference Gellner2003, 137; Mácha Reference Mácha2016). According to some sources, Russell not only called Kolman an “NKVD agent” but also said: “tell your masters that the next time they send a propagandist to the West they had better send somebody with more brains than you seem to possess” (Mácha Reference Mácha2016, 137).Footnote 5 Whatever the true story of their interaction, this kind of “suffering” for partisanship could only ensure Kolman in being on the “right side” of the divided world. Both at international congresses and in Czechoslovakia, he represented himself as a “missionary,” which was not merely a metaphor:
The growing masses of the capitalist world understand better now the redemptive task of the Soviet Union; the best of contemporary Western thinkers are realizing the importance of the revolutionary worldview which has led the Soviet Union to its famous victory. (Kolman Reference Kolman1948, 648)
Framing loyalty to the Soviet Union as the only form of partisanship (and thus legitimizing Soviet expansionism), Kolman explained to the international and Czechoslovak publics the “obvious” fact about the position of the Soviet Union in the partisan world of post-war Europe as the following:
The Soviet Union, which is the most powerful and now the only reliable pillar of the socialist camp, has never used any coercive methods towards middle- and small-sized countries (střední a malé státy), but, on the contrary, helped them to resist imperialist pressure so that they could preserve the right of their nations (právo svých narodů) to freely decide about their own matters. (Kolman Reference Kolman1948, 648)
While, during the Stalinist purges, partisanship had served as an instrument of homogenizing academic practice within the Soviet Union, after the Second World War, it became an instrument of legitimizing Soviet dominance in Central and Eastern Europe. In both cases, Kolman was able not only to present himself as a virtuous scholar but also to deserve his status as a master of partisanship.
3. Adam Schaff as a cultivator of a non-fertile soil
Training in Soviet academia was also key to Adam Schaff’s career as a master of new virtues in post-war Poland. Schaff was born in Lviv in 1913 (then part of “Austrian Galicia” and later Polish Lwów). Having passed the school examination with distinction, Schaff graduated with excellent scores from the University of Lviv, at which he studied law and political economy (nauki ekonomiczno-administracyjne).Footnote 6 Later, Schaff moved to the Soviet Union, where he got a PhD in philosophy (kandidat filosofskih nauk) (1941) and the highest doctoral degree of Soviet academia – Doctor of Philosophical Sciences (doctor filosofskih nauk [1945] – Arnošt Kolman was among the reviewers of his dissertation) (Schaff Reference Schaff1997, 25). In this way, Schaff received a confirmation of his right to preach the virtue of partisanship directly from the Soviet scholars.
In the early post-war period, Schaff bore witness to the new ideological campaigns in Soviet academia that were meant to discipline Soviet scholars and scientists. The most famous campaign of this kind was that against the philosopher Georgy Aleksandrov. A child of the Stalinist reforging of Soviet academia, Aleksandrov was initially awarded with a Stalin prize (Reference Stalin1946), but, several months later, Stalin expressed his dislike towards a sympathetic account of “Western philosophy” in Alexandrov’s History of Western European Philosophy. The main ideologist of the Soviet regime, Andrei Zhdanov organized a “public discussion” on Aleksandrov’s “errors” and “demonstrated” among other things that these “errors” were rooted in the “non-partisan attitude” of the author (Zhdanov Reference Zhdanov1952, 16, 19, 20). At the end of the discussion, Aleksandrov went through the purging fire of self-criticism and was “accepted” back to the “party of truth” (Kojevnikov Reference Kojevnikov1998, 28–36). In contrast to the 1930s (the highest point of Kolman’s quest for partisanship), the post-war virtue of partisanship changed its function within the Soviet Union. In a homogenized Soviet academic landscape, there was no need to fight those who claimed to be non-partisan. Instead, it was important to constantly check the loyalty of those who claimed to be partisan. Being a part of Schaff’s academic experience, this did not give much instruction on how to apply partisanship to Polish soil.
In the post-war Polish state, ruled by a government established by the Soviet leadership, Schaff’s Soviet training became an important resource for the political leadership of the country. Having Schaff on board secured a highly qualified control over the re-education of Polish academics. Meanwhile, it is no less important that Schaff – having moved back to Poland, where academic life maintained a continuity even during the war (Cain Reference Cain2021) – had considerable difficulty legitimizing himself in Polish academia (Connelly Reference Connelly1996, 326). His early attempts to preach “partisanship” did not meet any understanding among Polish scholars (Lochmatow Reference Lochmatow2023, 114–140). Even those who called themselves Marxists publicly recognized the limitations of the Marxian approach and promoted either a non-partisan view of science or a form of partisanship that did not correspond much with that of the Soviet Union (Gdula Reference Gdula2017). Additionally, in the early post-war years, Schaff still did not have strong governmental support in the radical reformation of Polish academia.
Nevertheless, the escalation of the Cold War made a radical reconstruction of the Polish academic landscape an inevitability. The political developments constituted a situation in which Schaff, as he put it himself, could get “a lot of power” for implementing a large-scale program for re-educating Polish scholars (Chwedeńczuk Reference Chwedeńczuk2005, 13–14). Since the institutional changes conducted under the wave of so-called “Stalinization” could not change the basic principles on which scholarly practice was based, Schaff’s task was to teach his Polish colleagues how to be “partisan” in a country that, even at the highest point of “Stalinism,” formally maintained its multi-party political system.
Following the Soviet example, Schaff started by creating institutions in which the virtue of partisanship could be properly cultivated. One of them was The Institute of Formation of Academic Cadres (Instytut Kształcenia Kadr Naukowych). At this institute, Schaff gathered young intellectuals, many of whom would later become prominent scholars. The closed and quasi-military character of intellectual training made this school a laboratory for creating a new kind of scholar (Bińko Reference Bińko1996). Nevertheless, it was not enough for Schaff to teach a selected group of young people to be partisan. Despite all the specific features of the Polish case, Schaff mobilized his young guard for promoting the virtue of partisanship beyond the group of party scholars. Following the pattern prescribed by Kolman in the 1930s, Schaff focused his main attack on logical positivists and the proponents of “non-political” science. The so-called Lvov-Warsaw school founded by the logician Kazimierz Twardowski (whose students dominated the philosophical field in Poland) became the main object of this re-education (Kokowski Reference Kokowski, Aronova and Turchetti2016).
After the closure of the leading Polish philosophical journal Przegląd Filozoficzny (The Philosophical Review), Schaff was appointed to lead a new philosophical periodical Myśl Filozoficzna (Philosophical Thought). Along with a considerable number of popular publications aiming to “enlighten” the Polish public regarding the role of “partisanship” (Schaff Reference Schaff1951a), Schaff actively used the academic press to force Polish scholars to restructure their academic practice. The editorial board of Myśl Filozoficzna (highly likely Schaff himself) tried to transmit the central message that Kolman used to propagate throughout his career:
The world is divided into two camps. On the one side – the camp of peace and socialism headed by the Soviet Union … which attracts millions of ordinary and honest workers around the world. On the other side – the imperialist camp trying to start a new military conflagration in the interests of the Anglo-American aggressors … a camp that wants to stop and reverse the development of the world in order to save a dying capitalism. (Schaff [?] Reference Schaff1951b, 7)
This framework was supposed to determine any scholarly work under the socialist regime. From this perspective, not only academia but the “Polish nation” (naród) was supposed to “rebuild themselves from a bourgeois nation to a socialist one” (Schaff [?] Reference Schaff1951b, 8), a process that was supposed to be led by academics.
Like Kolman in his own context, Schaff was ready for an uncompromising struggle against the relics of “bourgeois science”:
Without uprooting the relics of bourgeois consciousness, without fighting against political, legal, moral, philosophical, aesthetic bourgeois views, without the victory of new views and the constant strengthening of new institutions that would meet the needs of the socialist base shortly, without the constant development of socialist consciousness, the socialist nation cannot be crystallised … (Schaff [?] Reference Schaff1951b, 10)
The ambition of a “moral” reformation and the required change to the basic virtues in both political and academic domains would not be reachable without breaking all ties with the theories and theorists who did not stand with the Soviet Union in their ideological struggle.
Like Kolman, Schaff used a quasi-moral rhetoric when complaining about Polish scholars who witnessed the “partisan truth” but did not accept it. In this way, he wrote about one of the most prominent Polish philosophers Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, who continued to review the recent publications in the field of logical positivism:
Socialism has won, [and] the role of Marxist ideology has changed in Poland; the scientific Marxist criticism of positivism has reached us. Nevertheless, Ajdukiewicz discussed the position of neo-positivism not only with an “academic objectivity,” without a hint of criticism, but also with sympathy … with approval. (Schaff Reference Schaff1952, 252)
From Schaff’s perspective, this kind of “academic objectivity” was not only a wrong virtue but a vice. It was not possible to be non-partisan and keep doing “good science.”
Following the example of their supervisor, Schaff’s group of young Marxist scholars prepared a series of critical publications that aimed to “assist” established scholars in their expected transition to the new “moral economy.” Directly referencing Andrei Zhdanov’s methods of disciplining academics (Kroński Reference Kroński1952), Schaff’s students diligently analyzed the views of Polish philosophers to demonstrate that even materialism without partisanship could become an idealist ideology (Baczko Reference Baczko1951), and that “non-virtuous” scholars are incapable of conducting valuable scholarship (Kroński Reference Kroński1952). The ultimate claim of the campaign was very simple: To become a “good scholar” in socialist Poland, one had to reject the legacy of the Lvov-Warsaw School and take “the path of the party of materialism, [the path of] the party of truth” (Holland Reference Holland1952, 311).
As it was with Kolman’s quest for partisanship, Schaff’s virtuous program under “Stalinization” implied that any intellectual affiliation with the scholarly groups based beyond the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union was equal to treason. Having witnessed the struggle against cosmopolitanism in the Soviet Union (Azadovskii and Egorov Reference Azadovskii and Egorov2002), Schaff could not fail to publicly challenge the vice of cosmopolitan thinking, which, in his view, was the background of the aim for an “abstract objectivity.” In the case of the Lvov-Warsaw School, it was not a problem to find discrediting ties with the “West.” Their former affiliation with the Viennese Circle of logical empiricism allowed Schaff to trace the paths that had been taken by their associates after the war. According to Schaff, most logical positivists had left for the USA and England, and thus developed their theories to “a flagship philosophy of the world reaction.” Thus, from Schaff’s perspective, the intellectual affiliations of non-Marxist philosophers along with their stubbornness in joining the “party of truth” caused their “moral” corruption and made them servants of the bourgeoisie (Schaff Reference Schaff1952, 254).
From the very establishment of a Soviet-dominated government in Poland, it was considered an especially difficult case by the Soviet leaders (e.g. Connelly and Grüttner Reference Connelly and Grüttner2005, 185–212). The umbrella of so-called “People’s Democracy,” used by socialist scholastics for describing the diversity within the socialist bloc (Volokitina, Murashko, and Noskova Reference Volokitina, Murashko and Noskova1993), made the usage of partisanship highly problematic. Since partisanship, in its Soviet version, formally suggested loyalty to the proletariat (which had only been represented by the party), the cultivation of partisanship during the spread of Stalinism in Central and Eastern Europe implied foremost a cultivation of loyalty towards the Soviet Union. Scholars and scientists had to learn to see the world divided into two camps and to determine their scholarship through the will of the Soviet flagman of the proletariat. Despite the inner contradictions of this program, Schaff conducted one of the most persistent attempts to adapt partisanship to Polish soil, which brought him to the top of the Polish academic establishment.
4. The vice of being too zealous: Partisanship as a stability factor and Kolman’s “faults”
Kolman’s difficulties with acceptance of the “official science” began soon after his return to Czechoslovakia. Being a leading professor at the Party School, Kolman was not seen as an indisputable authority beyond the Marxist section of Czechoslovak academia. Unlike Poland, Czechoslovakia politically maintained more autonomy from the Soviet Union, until the seizure of power by communists in 1948, and Kolman’s promotion of Soviet dominance only stressed the differences between the “moral economies” of the Soviet and Czechoslovakian academic systems. His attempts to attack the established academic norms provoked a tough response from other academics. For example, Kolman systematically attacked Czechoslovakian sociology as a research field (that, under Stalin, was considered a bourgeois science) and questioned its right to be an academic discipline. What Kolman challenged was not only a small section of Czechoslovak academia, but the core of the Czechoslovak scholarly tradition. The first president of the Czechoslovak Republic, the sociologist and philosopher Tomáš Masaryk, made sociology a state-relevant discipline, and sociology’s development was a part of political continuity from the interwar Czechoslovak democratic state (Hegar Reference Hegar2013; Skovajsa and Balon Reference Skovajsa and Balon2017, 27–48). When responding to Kolman’s publications, Masaryk’s student Josef Král (1882–1978) did not hesitate to write:
With regard to sociology, Prof. Kolman follows the same line of rejection as National Socialism, which not only considered sociology as a Western European science, but [also considered sociology] just a Jewish science, and more and more suppressed and destroyed it. (Král Reference Král1947, 159)
Even Kolman’s position in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia proved not as strong as he would have wished it. After the seizing of power by the communists, Kolman radicalized his discourse and started to fight “non-partisan” attitudes among the leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He strove to publicly criticize “nationalist tendencies” in the discourse of the Czechoslovak communists and their failure to be partisan enough in recognizing the dominance of the Leninist principles embodied in the Soviet Union (Kolman Reference Kolman1982b, 185–195).
Obviously, Kolman did not write anything that would contradict the official position of the Soviet Union that was delivered to the leaders of the communist parties during the first meeting of the Cominform in the Polish town Szklarska Poręba in the autumn of 1947 (Adibekov Reference Adibekov1998). Nevertheless, Kolman made an error. The form and function of partisanship that he used to successfully preach throughout his career was changing alongside the status and role of the Soviet Union. The main goals of the ideology of partisanship were shifting: not just to fight ideological enemies and homogenize public discourses but also to maintain the stability of the regime and Soviet dominance in Central and Eastern Europe. In this way, the quest for stability started to play an increasingly significant role in the constellation of factors that determined how partisanship was supposed to work. Shortly after the communist coup in 1948, Kolman was arrested and sent to the Soviet Union, which took the side of the Czechoslovak comrades and kept him in jail till 1952. Kolman was released from prison only after the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slánský, was arrested and executed after a show trial conducted as part of an antisemitically motivated campaign against “Zionism.”Footnote 7
Even though Kolman survived the imprisonment and could continue his academic work, this story made him, in a sense, an outsider in both Soviet and Czechoslovakian academia. Having been one of the central figures of the Stalinist purges, Kolman definitively could not win the sympathies of the older scholars, some of whom returned to their academic work after having survived arrests. At the same time, for the new generation of academics who had properly learned how to make use of the new forms of being partisan, Kolman’s outsider position made him an easy target (Kovaly Reference Kovaly1972, 340). Even though, after Stalin’s death, Kolman still maintained the ability to directly communicate with the highest political leadership, his return to academia proved very difficult. In a letter to the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Kolman wrote that, as a professor of the Moscow Auto-Mechanical Institute (the job that he got after his release from prison), he had to teach future car mechanics and tractor engineers, which did not correspond with his qualifications. Describing his life situation, Kolman mentioned that he had tried to start negotiations on getting a job at the Moscow State University or the Soviet Academy of Sciences, but this undertaking “faced resistance both at the MGU [Moscow State University] and in the AN [Academy of Sciences]” (Grinina and Ilizarov Reference Grinina and Ilizarov1998, 157). Soviet philosophers did not want to accept Kolman as their colleague.
Despite his inglorious failure in Prague, Kolman was convinced that coming “back” to Czechoslovakia would be the best option for him. He wrote:
It is difficult to realise that I am not working up to my full potential. Since I think that I must speak to you sincerely without fear of being accused of a non-modest attitude, I cannot realise why I was not sent back to Prague, where – according to the reports of the Czech leading comrades – I worked very fruitfully for three years and where there is such a lack of Marxist forces. (Grinina and Ilizarov Reference Grinina and Ilizarov1998, 157)
Khrushchev forwarded the letter to Mikhail Suslov, who was responsible for international relations and ideological issues in the party. Suslov argued that the Czechoslovak comrades did not express any interest in Kolman, therefore, “there is no reason to send him – a Soviet citizen – to Czechoslovakia” (Grinina and Ilizarov Reference Grinina and Ilizarov1998, 159). Meanwhile, Suslov was good enough to find for Kolman a position at the Institute of the History of Natural Sciences (institute istorii estestvoznania), which was in a phase of post-war reorganization and, in fact, did not imply much contact with colleagues from the well-established disciplines such as philosophy or history (Grinina and Ilizarov Reference Grinina and Ilizarov1998, 159).
Several years later, Kolman got the opportunity to try his chance in Czechoslovakia once again. After negotiations with Czechoslovak comrades, Kolman not only was allowed to go to Prague, but also received the position of the Director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and became the editor of the philosophical journal Filosofický časopis (The Philosophical Journal). This was an obvious improvement of his situation. In his new role, Kolman actively developed the agenda of condemning the cult of personality and “dogmatism” (Kolman Reference Kolman1963) prescribed by the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Reference Kolman1956) (Kulski Reference Kulski1956), while arguing that this did not change much in the necessity to fight “revisionism” and to be “truly” partisan in science and scholarship (Kolman Reference Kolman1963).
However, Kolman’s “re-integration” into Czechoslovak academia was not as successful as it may seem at first glance. He was repeatedly openly criticized in the academic press, showing that his situation was far from the sacred position of an untouchable “old Bolshevik” and “Lenin’s combatant.” The communist lawyer and politician (later, one of the activists of the “Prague Spring”), Zdeněk Mlynář brought his dissatisfaction with Kolman to the communist press and accused him of violating the norms of good academic practice. The publications to which Mlynář was referring hardly contained the traces of “revisionism” of which he tried to accuse Kolman. It was rather a question of rhetorical skills to demonstrate fundamental ideological problems in Kolman’s post-war publications.
In his criticism, Mlynář referred to Kolman’s attitude, according to which “Science and ideology are two parts of the social consciousness. Science is, basically, an objective picture of the world; ideology is a constellation of ideas that a society has about itself. Marxist ideology is a scientific one since it is based on science” (Mlynář Reference Mlynář1960, 290). Mlynář argued that this attitude meant that Kolman divided in his theory ideology and science and, at the same time, propagated an egalitarian position of scientists and scholars in defining what the correct ideology is:
[Kolman] introduced into our science the elements [of the positivist philosophy], according to which the Party of Marxism-Leninism was only a “mediator” between the truly scientific theories and the working class, but not the real subject of the objective class knowledge, not the creator of the scientific theory. (Mlynář Reference Mlynář1960, 292)
Born in 1930, Mlynář did not witness how Kolman, based on Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism, attacked Soviet Mathematicians and other scientists who claimed to practice a “non-partisan” “pure” science. Thirty years later, it was the same work of Lenin (Mlynář Reference Mlynář1960, 292) that Mlynář referred to when explaining that Kolman’s egalitarian and abstract idea of science confused “the relationship between the partisanship of science and truthfulness as an objective and historical relationship,” as well as making it “difficult to understand why … communist partisanship is in accordance with the truthfulness of scientific knowledge while bourgeois partisanship contradicts it” (Mlynář Reference Mlynář1960, 292). In this way, Kolman not only had to face the accusation of being non-partisan, but he was also compared with the positivists, against whom he had been in combat throughout his career.
This kind of didactive criticism conducted by a thirty-year-old law scholar against the Director of the Institute of Philosophy on the pages of the official theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was a strong signal to Kolman.Footnote 8 Certainly, he was extremely offended by the way he was treated in Prague. His former desire to return to Czechoslovakia along with the exhausting process of changing his Soviet citizenship to a Czechoslovak one did not prevent Kolman from taking the decision to go back to the Soviet Union. In late 1962, Kolman wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Party and asked them to release him from the office of the Director of the Institute. The official reason that he gave was his “conviction” that scholarship should be driven by “younger people.”Footnote 9 Without hiding his frustration, Kolman submitted his application for a renunciation of his Czechoslovak citizenshipFootnote 10 and asked the Academy of Sciences to give him a confirmation of his work experience in Czechoslovakia for getting his pension in the Soviet Union.Footnote 11
Of course, Kolman changed as a person throughout his long career in academia. The times of a non-compromised fight for partisanship in science and scholarship that had been stopped by the arrest were replaced by a search for status and recognition. Kolman’s late interest for cybernetics as a form of rationalization from above can also be seen as a move to the idea that scholars and scientists should possess a special position in a socialist society. In one of his papers delivered at the Congress of Czechoslovak Writers in 1962, he claimed:
New technical achievements will have the greatest impact … on automation [of the ruling diverse processes], which will certainly be more general, more versatile, more complex in the near future, when cybernetic devices will replace our actions not only physically, but also mentally, when they will help us to manage the organic life, our physiological and psychological processes, and when a science like eugenics, which we philosophers have vilified in a sectarian way (sektářsky) only because it was racially abused, will be used for the betterment of the human race.Footnote 12
Even though the description of the critique of eugenics (which represented an essential part of Koman’s activity in the 1930s) as “sectarianism” could sound provocative, the general ideas of his fascination with cybernetics were rather in accordance with the more general tendencies of the development of post-Stalinist science and scholarship, at least in the Soviet Union (e.g. Gerovitch Reference Gerovitch2002). There, the status given to the “socialist scholars and scientists” of legitimators of the state was a tendency inherent in the institutional processes of the 1960s (Bikbov Reference Bikbov2016).
Nevertheless, by the 1960s, the broadcasting of the Soviet academic and political agenda ceased to be the main criterion of “true” partisanship. Under the conditions of the search for stability, the acceptance of a scholar within the “moral economy” of scholarship in a given socialist country became an increasingly important factor in securing his or her position in the academic landscape. Scholars successfully learned the mechanisms of instrumentalizing partisanship for putting their opponents out of the “moral consensus.” In this regard, academics received more opportunities in making coalitions against those whom they considered outsiders and accusing them of challenging the homogeneity of the nation and thus the stability of the regime. In this way, Kolman was excluded from the “moral economy” of Czechoslovak academia.
5. “Against” the party of nation: Adam Schaff and his “non-partisanship”
Adam Schaff’s project of re-educating Polish philosophers was not successful. The period between 1948 and 1953 (which Kolman spent in prison) was the highest point of Schaff’s administrative power. Nevertheless, even in this period he had to face public resistance from those whom he strove to teach (Lochmatow Reference Lochmatow2023, 141–196). During the political crisis of 1956, Schaff was confronted with criticism of the forms of partisanship that he used to promote in Poland. Thus, for example, a group of young scholars (the young sociologist Zygmunt Bauman was among their leaders) publicly claimed:
Until we make it clear to ourselves that, during the Stalinist period, we cultivated not science but ideology, one of the main functions of which was precisely to stifle the science of society, we will not get even a starting point for a full-fledged but not partial restoration [of philosophy and sociology]. (Bauman et al. Reference Bauman, Hirszowicz, Wesołowski and Wiatr1956, 1)
Of course, this opposition between science and ideology would not seem acceptable from the perspective of Soviet partisanship. Basically, the former students of Schaff attacked him for his attempts to make Polish academia partisan, a project that, in their view, destroyed “normal science.” From this perspective, their next step seems completely logical:
The fact that, in our political views, we are Marxists in ideology gives us no prerogatives in academic discussions, no a priori advantage over non-Marxist sociologists … rightness must be documented by scientific achievements. (Bauman et al. Reference Bauman, Hirszowicz, Wesołowski and Wiatr1956, 5)
This attack from the young activists dissatisfied with the scholarly and academic politics on Schaff’s appeal for “partisanship” was a manifestation of the fact that even the highest political pressure under Stalinization did not bring a new consensus regarding the virtues that were supposed to determine scholarly practice.
Even though the rebellious claims of students against partisanship were soon removed from the public sphere by censorship, Schaff continued to be publicly attacked in various other ways. For example, the sociologist Józef Chałasiński, who had been a decisive critic of Marxism immediately after the Second World War, but changed his public discourse significantly during the wave of Stalinization (Lochmatow Reference Lochmatow2020), accused Schaff of dogmatizing the teaching of Marx and Lenin and tried to question his leading position in Polish scholarship:
Without solid historical knowledge, Marxism-Leninism becomes a formal, and, in extreme forms, a scholastic [approach]. [Thus,] the discussion, which began with the martial fanfare of class and ideological struggle and [was conducted] under the banner of the clash between the old generation of humanists … and the young group of the Marxist vanguard, led not to an aggravation of methodological contradictions … but, on the contrary, to a general softening of the difference between [their] methodological attitudes. (Chałasiński Reference Chałasiński1957, 15)
Chałasiński, who, in this period, represented himself as a defender of a pure Marxism-Leninism, obviously used the accusation of dogmatism against Schaff to promote the restarting of his research field – sociology – that did not fit into the model of scholarship promoted by Schaff. During the wave of de-Stalinization after 1956, the concept of dogmatism was closely associated with Stalinism, while Schaff was in turn seen as one of the organizers of Stalinization. The accusation of dogmatism was an effective method of representing the opponent opposed to the normative consensus of scholarship under the new conditions.
The sentiments against Schaff found their expression in a series of public attacks on his scholarship. One such occasion that provoked a big ideological campaign against Schaff was the publication of his book Marksizm a jednostka ludzka [Marxism and the Human Individual] (1965). This book would be warmly welcomed in the left-wing circles outside Poland and would make Schaff a globally known Marxist thinker.Footnote 13 When reflecting on the issue of a human individual (jednostka ludzka), he argued that this issue had been forgotten by the communist writers in the times of Stalinism (Schaff Reference Schaff1965, 7–13). When delivering his arguments in an essayistic and easily readable manner, Schaff did not hesitate to refer to Martin Buber’s concept of homelessness for explaining Marx’s theory of alienation and to apply it to the realities of the “atomic age” of fear and uncertainty (Schaff Reference Schaff1965, 12). In this regard, Schaff’s argumentation in this book was deeply psychological, which could hardly be considered typical for his earlier works. Moreover, when reviewing the works of the so-called “revisionists” like Siegfried Landshut, Hans Mayer, Herbert Marcuse and even a Nazi-collaborator Henrik de Man, Schaff provocatively argued that there is a lot of truth in their works, and one should accept many of their arguments (Schaff Reference Schaff1965, 15–21).
Nevertheless, these “provocative” statements were actually literary tricks. The real aim of the book was to fight “revisionism.” In terms of content, Schaff did not much contradict his own theories of “socialist humanism” that he had promoted under Stalinism (Schaff: Reference Schaff1947a; Reference Schaff1947b, 3). Meanwhile, there was one important topic in the book that determined how Schaff’s work was perceived in some sections of the party leadership: antisemitism. When dealing with this issue, Schaff did not follow the tradition of “socialist realism” and did not argue that the problem had been resolved in the countries of the socialist bloc. He wrote:
Why antisemitism though there are so many other forms of nationalism and racism? Because, for these [European socialist] countries, it is a typical form of racism … and because antisemitism is historically rooted in these countries and has always had ultra-reactionary political implications, which with Hitlerfascism and its consequences only became crueler. … Not the fact that it [antisemitism] exists but that is has not been fought is shameful. (Schaff Reference Schaff1965, 154–155)
The strong antisemitic sentiments in the socialist bloc that led to violent pogroms across Central and Eastern Europe (Gross Reference Gross2006; Apor et al. Reference Apor, Kende, Lônčíková and Săndulescu2019), in post-1956 Poland were re-enforced by the myth of Stalinization as a project brought by Jews to Poland (Gross Reference Gross2001, 164–167). In this context, Schaff became a target of public criticism, this time from some of his Party comrades.
The very topic of the book provided Andrzej Werblan, historian and one of the leading figures in the campaign against Schaff, with the first argument: According to him, the book was written from “individualistic positions.” Since polemics with the ideology of individualism had been a central topic in the book, Werblan had to clarify that the problem was with making the individual but not collective entities such as class, nation (naród), state, or at least the Party the starting point of the narrative. At the same time, according to Werblan, Schaff’s reflections on alienation can be read as an argument against every kind of state and, more generally, against all forms of dominance of collectiveness over the individual. In this regard, it is interesting that not “revisionism” but “dogmatism” became the main accusation made by Werblan:
I argue that his [Schaff’s] understanding of the texts and theories of Marx and Engels sins by dogmatism (grzeszy dogmatyzmem). Marx and Engels based their works on the topic of alienation … on the observations of the situation of a worker in the capitalist industry of the 19th century. In the time, in which socialist states exist, in which every [communist] Party bears the responsibility for its own nation (naród) and [has the responsibility] in front of their own nation, the international interests of the working class can be satisfied only through [… bringing together] the national interest of various socialist states with the … general tasks of socialism. ([N.N.1] 1965, 72)
Thus, according to Werblan, Schaff broke the ties between the state, the party, and the nation of which it took care.
Of course, Werblan could not leave uncommented Schaff’s remarks on antisemitism. Along with antisemitic remarks, like characterizing Schaff’s approach to the works of Marx and Engels as a “Talmudic” one ([N.N.1] 1965, 59), Werblan tried to accuse Schaff of an intentional exaggeration of this problem. He argued:
Regarding nationalism, one should be fair to the achievements of our party in this regard [… the matter concerns] first of all the two significant manifestations of nationalism: Russophobia (antyrosyjskość) and Germanophobia (antyniemieckość) that had been rooted in our society very deeply and without any serious reasons for it. Nobody can deny what a great change we have done in this regard. Our progress is no less in the struggle against antisemitism that, under the current conditions, has become an absolutely marginal phenomenon. ([N.N.1] 1965, 71)
There is no need to comment on what kind of message this response had. Werblan’s strategy was to show that Schaff with his “Talmudic” and “dogmatic” approach to the texts of the classics of Marxism acted against the “national interest” and thus against the interest of the state and of the party.
Developing this idea, the lawyer and politician Wincenty Kraśko argued that, when dealing with the concept of alienation, Schaff forgot to apply it to a nation. By this, Kraśko meant, in fact, nothing but the “offending of national feelings” ([N.N.1] 1965, 76) that, according to him, Schaff committed with his accusation of antisemitism in the socialist countries. He said:
Comrade Schaff sharply denounces the fact of the alleged lack of struggle against antisemitism in socialist countries. This is a very strong accusation. Comrade Schaff believes that these issues [of antisemitism] are treated shamefully, and [that] it is necessary to talk about them openly, loudly. And again, it is difficult to agree with the diagnosis of the disease, and with the recommended way to combat it. … The fact of antisemitism is very painful and indignant. But the accusation of antisemitism is also very hurtful and outrageously unjustified, unfounded. … Nothing could be further from the truth than to say that there is antisemitism in the sense of political, economic and cultural discrimination in Poland. This part of the book [that concerns antisemitism], is, in my opinion, rather harmful. ([N.N.1] 1965, 76)
It is telling that almost every speaker in the debate about Schaff’s book (which, according to the party functionary Zenon Kliszko, took more than ten hours) criticized the exaggeration of the problem of antisemitism ([N.N.1] 1965, 81, 111, 123) even though this topic took up only a few lines in the book. The intention behind the speeches of most of the participants was to make of Schaff a figure that opposed himself to the nation and the party and thus violated partisanship.
It is very characteristic that Kliszko closed the discussion on the work of Schaff (one of the most committed fighters for partisanship in Poland) with a didactive comment on “real partisanship” and its moral implications:
Finally, I would like to raise one issue that arises irresistibly after reading comrade Schaff’s book … I am referring to the issue of partisanship and political responsibility in science, specifically in the social sciences. At one time, perhaps too much was said about this, and in any case not always correctly, because the concept of partisanship in science was reduced to postulating works on a “prescribed topic” and in a “prescribed way,” or even to postulating blind imitation and compilation. … the partisan character of the social sciences manifests itself in a special political responsibility that the social scientists have. … There was a lot of critique of comrade Schaff. … When overcoming dogmatism and the vulgarization of Marxism, the Party created the conditions for overcoming the contradiction between the attitude of the Party and the results of scholarly investigations …. The Party and its leadership … are deeply interested in academic debates in the field of the social sciences [… this interest] comes from … the responsibility that the Party bears for shaping the life of the nation …. ([N.N.1] 1965, 183–185)
The hints at Schaff being stuck in the Stalinist idea of partisanship were part of a coherent picture of a “Jew” acting against the nation and the state and, with his “Talmudism” and “dogmatism,” refusing a truly collectivist idea of partisanship. The point concerning “imitation and compilation” emphasized the necessity to be a part of an “organic” common sense produced by the “Party” (or its dominant group) and not opposed to it.
In 1965, Schaff thanked his colleagues for a discussion that demonstrated how “the intra-party democracy works” ([N.N.1] 1965, 155). A few years later, some of these colleagues would play a central part in dismissing Schaff from his party and academic positions. With the beginning of the Six-Day War of Israel against the coalition of Arab countries in 1967, the struggle against “Zionism” became one of the central instruments in stabilizing the regime in front of growing rebellious tendencies. This led to one of the biggest antisemitic campaigns in post-war Eastern Europe (Stola Reference Stola2000).Footnote 14 Despite his friendship with the General Secretary of the Workers’ Party Władysław Gomułka and full support for the authoritarian regime, Schaff lost his positions during the wave of the antisemitic campaigns coordinated by the security services (Stola Reference Stola2000, 47–69). Schaff was suspended from teaching at the University of Warsaw.Footnote 15 In this way, the preacher of partisanship was thrown out of academia, being accused of a “violation” of partisanship.
6. Conclusion
“[Once] I was invited to Poland to give a lecture on the methodological aspects of physics and mathematics. The person who invited me was a member of the Academy of Sciences, Adam Schaff … I have always maintained sympathy for this independent man of deep and original thinking” (Kolman Reference Kolman2005, 325). With these words, Arnošt Kolman described his younger colleague. The relationship between Kolman and Schaff, along with the history of their mutual “sympathy,” requires further investigation. While the similarity of their political and academic positions as preachers of partisanship is evident, it does not mean that their views were identical. For example, Kolman, a former reviewer of Schaff’s dissertation, did not hesitate to sharply criticize Schaff’s concept of humanist socialism, which lead to “a friendly exchange of views” between the two ideologists of partisanship (Fritzhand Reference Fritzhand1963). More importantly, the late stages of their careers vividly illustrate how different the paths taken by Kolman and Schaff were.
After vainly attempting to establish himself as the father of socialist cybernetics (Kolman Reference Kolman1955, Reference Kolman1956, Reference Kolman1969) and in this role to continue to influence the scholarship in his native Czechoslovakia,Footnote 16 Kolman decided to emigrate to Sweden, where his daughter had already settled with her family. While in Sweden, he started to openly criticize the Soviet regime and publish texts in support of the dissident movement in the socialist bloc (Kolman Reference Kolman1979). Schaff, on the contrary, remained a loyal ideologist of the authoritarian regime until its collapse. After spending his “exile” in Vienna as a Polish representative to UNESCO, Schaff returned to Poland, where he accepted the apologies given to him by the academic institutions that had expelled him during the antisemitic campaign of 1968.Footnote 17 Schaff only started to blame the regime of the Polish People’s Republic for its authoritarian character after it had ceased to exist; earlier he criticized both the opposition movements of the 1970s and Solidarność.Footnote 18
Nevertheless, the similarity in their academic and political engagements allows us to examine not only their own stories but also the changes in the fundamental principles of academic practice that occurred under Soviet domination in Central and Eastern Europe. Their attempts to adapt the norms and virtues learned in the Soviet Union to the academic practice in their native countries led to their isolation both in their professional circles and in the party (though in different ways). Despite Soviet dominance, scholars and scientists were able to develop instruments to “morally” defeat their opponents, which were, among other things, directed against the “purists” of Soviet norms. One of these instruments was partisanship.
Partisanship was not just an idea. It was an epistemic and civic virtue that had to be cultivated and performed both in scholarship and in politics. This determined its quasi-moral authority. Like any virtue, it could only manifest in concrete practices. The nature of these practices was determined by a complex constellation of factors, with its role in maintaining the regime playing a central part. These functions changed throughout history, leading to corresponding changes in the forms of the application of partisanship.
During the establishment of socialist regimes, partisanship primarily served as a tool for homogenizing academic practices by integrating all scholars and scientists into a common “moral economy.” It was important to fight non-partisan attitudes in science and scholarship to transform the foundation of the “old” criterions of good academic practice and create a new set of commonly accepted virtues. In the context of this intense struggle, decisiveness and an unwavering commitment to promoting partisanship while opposing non-partisanship were essential. Despite varying degrees of success, this application of partisanship significantly influenced the career advancement of both Kolman and Schaff.
However, with the establishment of the regimes and the enforced recognition of partisanship as a virtue by most scholars (at least in certain academic circles), the praxeology of partisanship inevitably changed. It became one of the central instruments in maintaining the stability of the regimes in which the (ruling) party claimed to have the power and represent the “socialist people.” The socialist ideology’s claim to victory fostered the idea of unity between the (ruling) party and “its people.” As scholars gained greater autonomy in filling prescribed ideological forms with content, opponents of Kolman and Schaff began to use their own weapons against them.Footnote 19 There was no need for missionaries of partisanship in a community that claimed to be “rebaptized.” The accusation of “non-partisan attitudes” became a tool for branding opponents not only as “enemies” of the party but also enemies of the nation.
The history of partisanship in the socialist bloc is not simply the history of partisanship in general. Rather, it is a history of practicing partisanship that could take various different forms and often contained conflicting meanings. This reflected the structure of the regime that claimed to want to destroy the boundaries between scholarship and politics while violently promoting a set of specific virtues and norms and strictly controlling the “virtuousness” of its academics. The restricted opportunities for open debate regarding these virtues and norms did not render them coherent and unchangeable. On the contrary, it created room for the formation of alliances aimed at manipulating established norms and virtues, rather than questioning their very foundations.
This article should not be interpreted as an “exposure” of partisanship or a condemnation of the political character of knowledge. On the contrary, it can be seen as a plea for critical reflection on the situatedness of knowledge and the political and social contexts of its production, an approach that maintains a certain continuity with the theory of partisanship, though in a form which is a far cry from that described in this article.
Acknowledgments
This article was written as part of Grant Project No. GF21-45624L, “Czechoslokak-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in the Cold War Between High Politics and Individual Strategies.” I warmly thank Jörg Hügel, Charlotte Murphy, Tomáš W. Pavlíček, Jan Surman, Alexander Dmitriev, and Maciej Górny for their very helpful comments on the manuscript of this article.
Alexej Lochmatow is a Martin Buber Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He got his PhD from the University of Cologne and the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interest lies in the history of science and humanities, public knowledge, and intelligence research.
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