ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Session proposal "Economics under Political Represion"
Author: ZWEYNERT Joachim
Session Proposal Economics under Political Repression Natal’ya Makasheva, Vladimir Avtonomov, and Joachim Zweynert One of the common experiences of the European people in the 20th century is the different forms of totalitarianism. Due to the restrictions or the abolition of the freedom of speech, and in particular due to the hostile attitude of totalitarian regimes towards independent intellectuals, scientists belonged to the groups that suffered particularly hard from political dictatorships. In the HET literature there are some works dedicated to the conditions of economic research under political repression in individual countries. However, according to our knowledge there are no studies comparing the cases of different countries, and especially not comparing the cases of Western and formerly socialist countries. During the last years, ESHET has enhanced co-operation with our colleagues from Central and Eastern Europe. This now gives us the possibility to compare the experiences in countries like Germany and Italy on the one hand, and such as the Soviet Union/Russia and other formerly socialist countries on the other. Especially interesting could be the investigation of different escape-strategies, employed by economists under different degrees of political repression. Among the most important of them seems to be the search for national traditions of economic thought and the increase of mathematical formalism. The session is planned as a double panel. The first panel will be fully dedicated to the experience of the Soviet Union. In regard of the brutality and aggressiveness of the regime, Stalinism certainly can be compared to Hitlerism. But whereas relatively much research has already been done about the German experience, up to now there is almost no literature dealing with the impact of totalitarianism (and post-totalitarianism) on economic research in the Soviet Union. The length of totalitarian period in the Soviet Union was also unprecedented which allowed various kinds of escape-strategies to be displayed. Hence this topic deserves special attention. The second panel will deal with the cases of Central and Western Europe in comparative perspective. So there should be two presentations on the experience of Central European Countries and two presentations on that of Western European countries, such as Germany, Italy, or Austria. In case an author would like to contribute something about the experiences of Japan or the USA in the McCarthy-era, this would be highly welcome. In case the double panel will be successful, one might think of further activities related to this topic, e.g. the organisation of an ESHET workshop or the publication of selected papers. Expected participants of the first panel: Natal'ya Makasheva, Vladimir Avtonomov, Joachim Zweynert. Expected participants of the second panel: Riccardo Faucci, Nils Goldschmidt, Aladar Madarasz, Milan Sojka. The participants will submitt their individual abstracts via the conference website.
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