Wobec dogmatyzmu. Zachodni marksizm, The Making of the English Working Class i komunistyczne historiografie w NRD, Czechosłowacji i Polsce 1948–1990
Meeting the Hard Line: Western Marxism, The Making of the English Working Class, and the Communist Historiographies of the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland 1941–1990

Summary/Abstract: Although the impact outside the U.K. of E.P. Thompson’s work, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), has been recognized and pointed to many times, the ways in which Thompsonian categories and concepts, or Marxist thought from the West more broadly, was received in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc remain rather unclear. This paper traces the ways in which historians of the GDR, Poland and Czechoslovakia responded to these challenges to the official position of Marxist orthodoxy. Taking Thompson´s seminal piece as an example, it highlights the reception (or lack thereof) of Western influences on local scholarship and the dynamics of these encounters – whether they were affirmative or critical – in relation to the changing political landscape of East-Central European countries after World War II.

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