Classics and Communism: Greek and Latin behind the Iron Curtain

The book was born of an international research project which aimed to discover and explore the history of classical philology after World War II in what was then considered the camp of Socialist countries. Working together with colleagues from these countries, sharing and comparing common experience, participants were able to acquire a better grasp of a subject not yet examined in detail, peeling layer after layer off the still unknown history of this important aspect of European culture under Communist siege. Soviet seeds fell on more or less fertile soil in the respective countries, and strategies applied by the new authorities towards studies of antiquity differed accordingly. The work involved a number of "case studies," such as personal histories of prominent philologists in the region, as well as national surveys. Classical studies were explored in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, particularly in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine; the situation in Yugoslavia was examined on the example of Serbia and Slovenia.