@conference{
author = "Korolija, Maja",
year = "2020",
abstract = "As a result of acknowledging the social importance of science, inherent to the
Marxist-Leninist ideology, in the aftermath of the WWII the process of
accelerated scientific development was initiated in Yugoslavia with the assistance of
the USSR. The Yugoslav communists relied on the USSR, and therefore the
Soviet science model was one they opted for. However, in 1948. Yugoslavia
broke away from the Eastern bloc led by the Soviet Union. The Communist Party
of Yugoslavia (CPY) was excluded from the Information Bureau of the Communist
and Workers' Parties (Cominform), charged with reintroducing capitalism and
displaying nationalist tendencies. Prior to this, and in line with the practice in
the USSR, the scientific discourse in Yugoslavia was critical of the scientific
practice in the West, which was labeled idealist, positivist, historicist, bourgeois,
etc. The scientific practice in Yugoslavia was placed in the framework of
historical and dialectical materialism, Marxism-Leninism, which postulated that the
science should grow from and be as close as possible to the concrete realities of
the Yugoslav society. The basic feature of this practice was "partisanship", which
meant that science, as all other spheres of human activities, is also a field of
ideological struggle. Edvard Kardelj, one of the main ideologists of the CPY,
delivered a speech in 1949, at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which
stood as the first explicit critique of the Soviet model of science by the Yugoslav
communists. In this speech, the USSR was accused of anti-scientific tendencies,
of making the science an "unprincipled layman of practical bureaucracy" (which is
how he saw the partisanship in science); instead, the science, according to
the new Yugoslav ideology, should serve the "truth" and "prosperity", while the
scientists in Yugoslavia should be "free in their creation." The promotion of the
sovereignty of science and the criticism of "partisanship" by the Yugoslav
communists runs counter to the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the role of
science. That speech clarified ideological shift that was taking off, and laid the
ideological foundations for the new scientific practice in Yugoslavia. One which will
encompass liberal elements and would, thus, correspond more to the new political
system in Yugoslavia – the so-called self-managed socialism. It is my intention to
examine the line of argument in social sciences that emerged as a result of this
ideological shift, and which provided the new system in Yugoslavia with the
ideological framework for new practices, including the ones in the field of the
organization of science. I will analyze the nature of the evidence present in the
official ideology discourse of the direction that Yugoslav society has taken in the
period before and after the split with the USSR, as well as try to examine, in that
context, the issues of the relationship between political ideology and (social) science.",
publisher = "Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft",
journal = "Practicing Evidence - Evidencing Practice",
title = "Scientific Practice in Yugoslavia: From Marxism-Leninism to Self-Managed Socialism",
url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_rimsi_2351"
}