Dictatorships destroy intellectual freedom, yet universities
need it. How, then, can universities function under dictatorships?
Are they more a support or a danger for the system? In this volume,
leading experts from five countries explore the many dimensions of
accommodation and conflict, control and independence, as well as
subservience and resistance that characterized the relationship of
universities to dictatorial regimes in communist and fascist states
during the twentieth century: Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy,
Francoist Spain, Maoist China, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet
bloc countries of Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and
Poland.
Comparisons across these cases reveal that the higher-education
policies of modern dictatorships were characterized by a basic
conflict of aims. On the one hand, universities were supposed to
propagate reigning ideology and serve as training grounds for a
dependable elite. Consequently, university autonomy was restricted,
research used for political legitimation, personnel policies
subjected to political calculus, and many undesired scholars simply
put out on the street. On the other hand, modern dictatorships
needed well-educated scientists, physicians, teachers, and
engineers for the implementation of their political, economic, and
military agendas.
Communist and fascist leaders thus confronted the basic question
of whether universities should be seen primarily as producers of
ideology and functionaries loyal to the party line or as places
where indispensable knowledge was made available. Dictatorships
that opted to subject universities to rigorous political control
reduced their scholarly productivity. But if the institutes of
higher learning were left with too much autonomy, there was a
danger that they would go astray politically.
Besides the editors, the contributors are Ruth Ben-Ghiat,
Michael David-Fox, Jan Havranek, Ralph Jessen, Gyorgy Peteri,
Miguel angel Ruiz Carnicer, and Douglas Stiffler.
General
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