Sociologické bitvy o Varnu aneb česká/československá účast na VII. světovém sociologickém kongresu
Sociological Battles of Varna, or Czech/Czechoslovak Participation in the Seventh World Congress of Sociology

Summary/Abstract: The study approaches negotiations and power pressures associated with Czechoslovak participation in the Seventh World Congress of Sociology in Varna (1970), the first and only ISA congress held in the Eastern Bloc. The congress, which was of fundamental importance in this period, was taken as a showcase of Marxist sociology and was intended to significantly strengthen the position of East European sociologists in the international academy. In the case of the Czechs and Slovaks, however, the recent defeat of the Prague Spring came into play. Reformist-oriented sociologists had considered boycotting the congress, and even if this did not happen, it was assumed that the topic would be discussed at venues. The architects of the so-called normalization policy, managing the newly established Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Philosophy and Sociology, were fully aware of this. Therefore, they did their utmost to select the “right” congress participants and their topics, so in the end most of the leading names of Czech sociology of the 1960s dropped out of the more than one hundred-member delegation. Even an attempt to avoid this pressure through a “private trip” taken by inconvenient” sociologists to Varna ultimately did not yield (although roughly a fifth of the delegation took advantage of this opportunity). The Czechoslovak turnout in Varna was indeed high, but scientifically insignificant, which foreshadowed the fate of Czech sociology in the 1970s and even the 1980s.

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