THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY IN BULGARIA IN THE AGE OF SOCIALISM: THE PROBLEMATIC MAPPING OF ITS INSTITUTIONAL BOUNDARIES

Before the communist takeover of power on 9 September 1944, scientifi c research and training in history were concentrated in Sofi a University’s degree program in History. Once in power, the Bulgarian communists imposed radical changes in the system and structure of producing knowledge about the past. With increasing student enrollments, especially following the introduction of part-time degree program in 1949, by the late 1940s Sofi a University’s Faculty of History and Philology had become a “hothouse of teacher cadres.”1 In 1951 the degree program in History was separated from the “philologies.” A new Faculty of Philosophy and History – with degree courses in philosophy, history and pedagogy – was established. Following the Soviet attempt to separate scientifi c research from university teaching, the leading role in historical research shifted from Sofi a University to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS).2 A new law on the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, adopted on 11 February 1947, allowed the BAS’s Executive Council to create only a month later an Institute for Bulgarian History at the Academy’s branch for History and Philology.[...]