Most medieval historians—by which I refer primarily to scholars from Western, Northern, or Southern Europe, as well as North America—remain largely unfamiliar with the medieval history of Central and Eastern Europe. There has been even less awareness of the scholarship produced by historians in the former so-called socialist countries. Remarkably, this situation persists even thirty-five years after the fall of Soviet communism and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Throughout the twentieth century, two key factors reinforced this lack of engagement: the inaccessibility of historiography written in Slavic languages (and to a lesser extent in Hungarian or Baltic languages), and the ideological divide embodied by the Iron Curtain. These issues likely also apply to the early modern period. The history of Late Antiquity in Eastern Europe, however, constitutes a different field—one perhaps more familiar to Byzantinists. (I am unfortunately unable to assess whether Western European scholars were better acquainted with historiography in that area during the communist period.)
Of course, there were exceptions. Historiography produced in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) did not face a language barrier for Western readers, although these scholars focused primarily on the German Middle Ages and only marginally addressed more easterly regions. Several individual historians from Eastern Europe nevertheless achieved considerable recognition in the West. One thinks of the Czechoslovak medievalist František Graus, and perhaps even more so of the distinguished Polish economic and social historians of the pre-industrial era, such as Marian Małowist, Witold Kula, and Bronisław Geremek. Their prominence in Western scholarly circles was due in large part to the mediation of prominent figures within the Annales school, whose endorsement led to widespread admiration and citation.
Despite this, general historiographical overviews in Western languages offer scant coverage of medieval studies produced under Marxist-Leninist regimes. This makes the current volume particularly welcome. To my knowledge, no comprehensive historiographical surveys have previously been undertaken to introduce Western specialists to pre-industrial historical scholarship from the former communist bloc. A notable exception is the special issue of The American Historical Review (vol. 97, no. 4, October 1992), which examined the historiography of Eastern Europe shortly after the collapse of “actually existing socialism”—a timing that is, of course, no coincidence. Yet one wonders: was this interest merely ephemeral? Undoubtedly, prejudice also played a role in this neglect. Perhaps simplistic forms of anti-Marxism led Western scholars to assume that historians from communist regimes—many of whom were neither communists nor committed Marxists—produced only rigid, ideologically driven narratives. To some extent this was indeed the case, but it is far from the whole story. The volume under review compellingly demonstrates the complexity and diversity of post-war medieval scholarship in East Central Europe.
I will not summarize each chapter individually, nor name every contributor or topic, but the book presents a relatively coherent whole, and in that sense its structure is commendable. The essays focus on medievalists—archaeologists, economic, intellectual, cultural, and art historians—working in Poland, Hungary, and the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The editors are careful not to overstate their aims; they do not claim to offer a systematic overview of communist-era medieval studies. However, most contributions interrogate whether Marx’s and Engels’s ideas were implemented in their original form, their official (or “protocolar”) versions, or whether they were disregarded entirely. Particularly welcome is its inclusion of archaeology and art history, which are too often neglected in such discussions.
Moreover, as the book makes clear, the ideological frameworks that shaped or co-shaped the work of these historians were not limited to dialectical and historical materialism. More often, they were rooted in national traditions. Where a truly Marxist approach would have entailed an internationalist perspective—even in the study of regional or national histories—the political realities of post-war Eastern Europe often produced historical narratives more influenced by nineteenth-century nationalist paradigms than by theories of modes of production or the labour theory of value. This is hardly surprising given the abrupt imposition of Stalinist orthodoxy on countries with long-standing nationalist traditions of historiography. The result was often what might be called “medieval history in one country,” to paraphrase Stalin and his ideological ghostwriters. Conditions began to shift in later decades. Borders opened somewhat, and the influence of the Annales school made occasional inroads. Nonetheless, collaboration with Western scholars—including Marxist medievalists—remained rare.
Although the book focuses on medieval studies, it simultaneously offers a social history of intellectual life under totalitarian regimes that claimed to possess a scientific understanding of history and society. Many of the scholars examined had begun their careers prior to the communist takeover in 1945 and were often conservative historians who had dominated the interwar academic scene. For these “bourgeois” historians, adapting to so-called Marxism-Leninism became a condition for professional survival. Between the end of the war and Stalin’s death, the intellectual climate grew increasingly repressive. Opposition could lead to imprisonment or worse, and Stalin’s crude deformation of Marx’s materialist conception of history became the official dogma. However, ideological rigidity varied across time and place. Tito’s Yugoslavia, for example, fostered a very different intellectual atmosphere compared to other Eastern Bloc countries. The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and parallel events in Poland produced more repressive environments in their aftermath. Historians were often required to produce patriotic narratives aligned with the state’s national interests. In Poland, for instance, scholarship had to be both Marxist and strongly anti-German. Engagement with classic Marxist debates, such as those on modes of production, was formally encouraged. Yet, ironically, few Eastern European contributions stood out in discussions like the “transition from feudalism to capitalism,” a topic that had generated significant innovation among Western Marxists—Kula’s pioneering work on the economic theory of feudalism being a notable exception, but he was a historian of the early modern period. Key topics included the formation of medieval states, the nature of the nobility and peasantry, and popular religious movements like the Hussites, which were at times interpreted as class struggles or even precursors of bourgeois revolution. But academics under communism were often isolated. As this volume shows, there were few international conferences among medievalists across the Eastern Bloc. Soviet historians sometimes adopted a patronizing stance toward their counterparts in satellite states. Even after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress, ideological institutions—such as party schools and national research centres—remained instrumental in legitimizing the regimes’ authority.
Still, it would be reductive, as several chapters emphasize, to regard all scholars as mere party ideologues writing propaganda. While many practiced self-censorship or attempted to reconcile nationalist myths with pseudo-Marxist schemata, others were deeply committed to scholarly inquiry. Even in periods of greater ideological flexibility, the dominant view of history as a teleological process culminating in socialism, and the schematic tendencies of historical materialism, remained limiting. The result was a widespread discrediting of genuine Marxist scholarship. It was safer to follow the party line than to engage deeply with Marx’s own writings.
So were there no positive legacies from this body of work? Certainly, empirical research—particularly in Czech and Polish economic history—was internationally respected for its rigor and lack of dogmatism. Some scholars developed creative methods of circumventing censorship, such as framing their work between an opening quotation from Marx and a concluding one from Lenin. Others smuggled critical insights into their texts by conforming to ideological expectations in superficial ways—adding terms like “exploitation” to titles, for example. This volume illustrates that also in the communist countries, many medievalists, archaeologists, and art historians in fact demonstrated a critical approach to their sources and methods, and pursued historical truth with sincerity. To dismiss their work as uniformly compromised would be both reductionist and patronizing. Many of the figures discussed in this book—entirely unknown to me, and likely to many of my colleagues—deserve broader recognition. Too many compelling individuals are highlighted in this volume to name them all. One example is the Czech medievalist Ewa Maleczyńska, who studied the Hussites with great insight while still adhering to party orthodoxy in the 1950s. Some scholars were committed Marxists with deep theoretical understanding and humanist values that went beyond the party line. Others were Marxists without party affiliation, while still others functioned more as bureaucratic conformists. The palaeographer István Hajnal stands out as a figure of international stature. The portrayal of František Graus—as both a brilliant scholar and, at times, an authoritarian enforcer of Stalinist orthodoxy—is troubling but does not diminish his intellectual legacy.
All in all, the volume includes both institutional histories and more vivid accounts of intellectual and academic life. The quality of the English translation varies, and some chapters are stylistically challenging. But overall, this is a highly valuable and insightful work and I have enjoyed reading many of the contributions. It is to be hoped that it will inspire further studies on medieval historiography under communism.