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- Abstract:
Documents from the fund of the Ministry of Higher Education (State Archive of the Russian Federation) unveil the history of the “fight against cosmopolitanism” in 1949 in Moscow among philologists, especially professors, lecturers and other faculty members. The campaign against cosmopolitanism was a part of the general state policy, its target being expulsion of the Jews from the leading positions in the universities and academic institutions. As a result of such purges on ethnic grounds, scholarly traditions and academic staff suffered unredeemable damage which caused national scientific stagnation. The documents of the Ministry of Higher Education provide new data, for example, shed light on a specially planned purge (which remained unfulfilled) of the scholars at the departments of Western literature in the higher educational institutions of Moscow.
- Keywords: history of philology, science and ideology, cosmopolitanism, 1949, anti-Semitism, totalitarianism, educational policy, Moscow State University
- References:
Azadovskii K., Egorov B. O nizkopoklonstve i kosmopolitizme: 1948–1949 [About adulation and cosmopolitanism: 1948–1949]. Zvezda [Star], 1989, no 6, pp. 157–176. (In Russ)
Azadovskii K., Egorov B. “Kosmopolity”. Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie [New Literary Review], Moscow, 1999, no 36, pp. 83–135. (In Russ)
Druzhinin P.A. Ideologiia i filologiia. Leningrad, 1940-e gody: Dokumental’noe issledovanie [Ideology and philology. Leningrad, 1940: Documentary study]. T. 1–2. Moscow, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie Publ., 2012. (In Russ)