From Priests to Pathfinders: The Fate of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Russia after World War II
Journal: The American Historical Review
Year: 2015

IT IS NO EASY TASK TO WRITE ABOUT the fate of the humanities in Russia, because the term does not exist in the Russian language or academic culture. Russia has gumanitarnye nauki, "human sciences," but that term is almost a calque of the German Geistesweissenschaften, the distinction of which from Naturwissenschaften was so famously articulated by Wilhelm Dilthey. If the Naturwissenschaften are sciences of nature, then the Geistesweissenschaften are sciences of the spirit, and their methods radi