Белорусская историография о кадровом потенциале академической науки в начале ее институализации (1921—1924)
Belarusian Historiography of the Personnel Potential of Academic Science at the Beginning of its Institutionalization (1921—1924)

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the initial period of the institutionalization of science in the republic, one of the most significant results of which was the creation of the Institute of Belarusian Culture, reorganized into the BAS (1929). This problem has not received special consideration. The Inbelcult personnel potential of the outlined period for the first time became the subject of independent research. The purpose of the paper is to consider the formation of an academic research and personnel staff of the first institution of Belarus in the first half of the 1920s. In disclosing the topic the author relied on the general scientific principle of historicism, and also used the problemhistorical, historical-comparative, statistical, diachronic methods. It is argued that the available works on this problem reflect the fact of uncritical perception of the information contained in the publications of the 1920s, and therefore they are too categorical and static. There is revealed a real amount of researchers of the Institute of Belarusian Culture. The reasons for the multiple overestimations of the number of the employees of the institution in the contemporary scientific literature are identified. This was due to both the peculiarities of the scientific and organizational construction and sociopolitical circumstances. As a result of the study it was concluded that since the beginning of the 1970s a picture has been created that contributes to the a priori unjustified perception of the steady growth of the personnel potential of the Institute of Belarusian Culture in the early years of its existence. Moreover, the entire framework of such representations is built on one replicated figure, relating to January 1922 — 15 people. Since 1992 the second figure appears — 16 scientific workers, which does not correspond to the real dynamics of scientific personnel. Thus, over the past almost 50 years, the problem has not been investigated and its coverage was carried out at the level of the first concise acquaintance that did not develop into a comprehensive scientific study and was based mainly on several pre-war publications.

• Details
• Contents