The "new science" of communist Czechoslovakia after 1948 was supposed to be a party, state, directed and controlled (ideologically and power-wise) means of forming a "new society". In particular, pedagogical science was given the "historical task" of educating the "new communist man". (Tenorth 2017, Kestere 2013, 2018) Pedagogical science thus found itself after 1948 in a space of very active ideologization (Marxism-Leninism), instrumentalization for socio-political goals. The role of pedagogical science in the formation of the "new society" affected both the field of pedagogical theory and questions of methodology, as well as the institutional transformation of science. Czechoslovak pedagogy lost much after 1948 - scientific independence, thematic diversity, methodological pluralism and overall international orientation (Kasper 2020). Thus, in the "story" of Sovietization and ideological transformation of Czechoslovak pedagogical science, there was a significant "unification", i.e. the establishment of artificial poverty and homogeneity in theoretical approaches, methodological procedures, personnel "changes", as well as in the research topics themselves. Science has become a space of intense political control and a space of "service" for the realisation of political goals. One of them was the construction of an aesthetic image of a harmonious communist society, where all social, cultural and political differences were overcome and the concept of unity and harmony triumphed. That this was an artificial, imposed and very unfree concept is self-evident.

The paper deals with the analysis of pedagogical science in the time of "crisis and reform of society". After the period of the so-called 1950s, when the "disintegration" and discontinuity of Czechoslovak pedagogical thought and scientific life was actively worked on during the Stalinist period, Czechoslovak society found itself in a crisis after 1960 - economic, but especially political and legitimizing. This "crisis" was to result in a "positive" programme for the renewal of society and science, without leaving the roots of Marxist pedagogy behind. During the period of social "thaw" (1960-1967), many voices were heard in the Czechoslovak pedagogical, as well as in the wider cultural and political debate, calling for the rejection of the "logic" of uniformity and social and cultural homogeneity, and calling ( carefully, but nevertheless) for approaches that took into account individuality, personality, independence, and the activity of children and adolescents in the processes of education and training. Although 1968 was not the year of the "youth revolt" in Czechoslovakia (as will be pointed out in the analysis of the actors of the Czechoslovak year of 1968 in pedagogy themselves), it was a cultural and social milestone in time and space, when efforts to respect difference and diversity in education and upbringing resulted. How the voices calling for the "breaking" of the power unity of Marxism-Leninism in pedagogical theory, science and methodology were structured, what practices were promoted, how they were presented, how they were justified and who were the actors - these are the topics of the analysis of the "diversity stream of pedagogical thinking" in the period of the "pre-war" and the Prague Spring in our paper.

We view the theme of homogeneity and diversity in the Czechoslovak pedagogical debate of the 1960s in the space of reconstructing and interpreting the construction of a corpus of knowledge (Behm/Drope/Glaser/Reh 2017). In doing so, these are specific processes of shaping the state of knowledge under the conditions of a totalitarian unfree society. Thus, knowledge is the result not of free scientific research, but of processes of political instrumentalization and considerable ideological indoctrination, as well as of intense efforts to overcome the continuity of scientific thought and to sever the links and identities linked to the previous "culture" of science in interwar Czechoslovakia. Thus, in comparative approaches (Schriewer 2003) we are interested in questions of continuity and discontinuity of scientific thinking (Caruso et all 2013, Kocka 1998), pedagogical theory as well as scientific life itself, the emergence of the "new elite" and later the so-called "reform wave (group)" and its domination of the practices of the power of science. An important empirical basis for our analysis are the texts of the representative scientific journal Pedagogika, which was published with the support (and under the control) of the Ministry of Education and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, respectively by the staff of the Pedagogical Institute of the J.A. Comenius Academy of Sciences. Another part of the analysed documents are representative publications and monographs of the actors of the "new reformed" pedagogical science published in 1960-1968. Last but not least, we make use of the rich collection of the Pedagogical Institute of the Academy of Sciences itself, its records, analyses, forecasts, reports, programmes on the development of pedagogical science in the period under review. We make use of both sociology of knowledge and discursive analytical approaches (Sarasin 2017, Keller/ Hornidge/Schünemann 2018).

Our analysis presents a reconstruction of the main programmatic points of the "renewal" of pedagogical science in socialist Czechoslovakia within the framework of the political and social liberation of 1960-1968. We also interpret the role of pedagogical science in the overall belief of the then Czechoslovak (but also Soviet) communist authorities that only science could guarantee the victory of the East over the West, the victory of communism over the Western capitalist world. Taking into account the conclusions of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU on the role of science in communist society, we show what possibilities pedagogical science had to thematise diversity and at the same time to support a unified communist picture of the functioning of society. We also discuss the careful "critique" of formalism and dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism and point out what other theoretical approaches and scientific themes began to be opened up, thematized, analyzed, and with what results or "impacts" on scientific as well as political life in the scientific debate of socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. In this regard, we also point to the emergence of other diverse scientific societies, interdisciplinary academic teams and platforms in the field, which, among other things, took on the role of a "critical" actor calling for the "reform of pedagogical science". We analyze the program of education of a "harmonious developed socialist personality" in a society balancing the challenges of the scientific-technical revolution, the modern bureaucratization of society and the demands of total, all-round and ultimately harmonious personality development. Of course, we cannot sidestep the question as to how far this programme was more a utopian wish, a political "theatre", and how far it was a real scientific programme of "reformed science" in the period of the so-called Prague Spring and Spring of the 1960s.

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