The symposium, which is a cooperation of eleven scholars from seven different countries, aims at examining the common challenges facing the community of educational historians in Eastern Europe after 1945, both during authoritarian and democratic political transformations. The common element of the Czech, Hungarian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovakian and Ukrainian approaches is the similar historical background in the second half of the 20th century, or more precisely, the expansion of the socialist ideology and state apparatus under supervision by Moscow. This period brought a monolithic, strict and close system in these nations, including the academic life, influencing the attitude of researchers to join scientific communities or even diversify their cooperation network. Although several academic studies have examined the development of history of education in Eastern Europe, the aspect of relations between different communities on the field of educational history has been left underresearched from the perspective of this group of countries collectively. The symposium is divided into two sessions: the first one primarily focuses on the development of the different scientific communities after World War II (the socialist era), the second one examines the development next to the political changeover after 1989.

In the first part of the symposium, Blanka Kudlacova’s proposal examines the impact of the political changes of Czechoslovakia/Slovakia on the discipline of history of education in the second half of the 20th century. By the analysis of the relevant legislation and source literature, the abstract putting this case into a broader (Eastern European) perspective. After that, using various primary historical sources, the joint presentation of Tomas Kasper and Dana Kasperova is focusing on the “re-orientation” of the Czechoslovakian/Czech educational (scientific) communities from 1949 to 1989, in comparison with the interwar period and the processes starting in the 1980s. The third presentation, the proposal of Lajos Somogyvári is concentrating on the development in Hungary, comparing two characteristically differing periods of the Kádár Era with the help of primary sources, oral history and interviews related to the period between 1957 and 1989.

Continuing the analysis of this country in the second section, the presentation of Zoltán András Szabó, Imre Garai and Németh András focuses on the development of the Hungarian history of education researches after 1989 from two aspects: their appearance in the international discourse via the analysis of the abstracts of respective conferences – and their thematical orientation in comparison with the European and global trends by computer aided content analysis. Larysa Berezivska’s abstract introduces Ukraine’s integration to the continental scientific discourse in the field of history of education, highlighting also the role and position of historical approach in educational knowledge and teacher training. Moving North, the proposal of Iveta Kestere, Irena Stonkuviene and Veronika Varik analyses the Baltic States, where ambitions of the community of the educational historians in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are examined via the analysis of monographs, doctoral theses in history of education developed in the 1990s, as well as documents of the Baltic Association of the Historians of Pedagogy.

All six papers use primary sources interpreted through contemporary historiography of educational history. Each of them is perceived as a case study, which allows the drawing of common conclusions according to our objectives. First findings reveal that the path of educational historian communities in Eastern Europe has been less dependent on the development of the academic field but more on direct political intervention. That is, disregarding the fact whether the political rule changed from democracy to totalitarian regime or vice versa, interrupted the natural evolution of history of education, thus losing the succession of academic development.

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