Kyiv Philosophical School as a Partner of International Scientific Life during the Cold War: The Experience of Dialogue in Geopolitical Confrontation

Article
Open Access
by Heorhii Vdovychenko1
1 Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Kyiv, Ukraine)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29202/fhi/15/11
Received: 10 January 2021 / Accepted: 20 February 2021 / Published: 25 April 2021

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Abstract

The article deals with the formation of the image of the Kyiv philosophical school as a well-known partner of international scientific life of the second half of the twentieth century in the context of oral autobiographical reproductions and, in general, memoirs of its founders and leading figures. Kyiv philosophical school was one of the most famous innovative academic humanitarian projects in the Ukrainian SSR during the Khrushchev “thaw,” which was started in the 1960s by the director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR P. Kopnin (1962 — 1968). Continued by his successor V. Shynkaruk (1968 — 2001) in a difficult period from the neo-Stalinist “stagnation” to Gorbachev’s “perestroika,” the collapse of the USSR and Ukraine’s independence era, this project became a prominent participant in the international scientific life of the Cold War era. A number of the final autobiographical reconstructions of the creators of this school, first of all, academicians S. Krymskyi and V. Horskyi, were received in independent Ukraine in the context of the first domestic project on the oral history of philosophy of T. Chaika and the one of Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. They allow us to reproduce many of the silenced pages of the role of the Kyiv philosophical school on the world arena of that time, in particular, the experience of initiated and gained by their authors direct and indirect scientific dialogues with scholars and scientific institutions of the Eastern and Western blocs as participants in the global geopolitical confrontation. Memories of both academicians and their colleagues (A. Horak, V. Tabachkovskyi, M. Honcharenko, V. Lisovyi and others) reveal the contribution of the philosophers of the sixties of the Ukrainian SSR to the comprehension and overcoming of the mentioned confrontation between the USSR and the USA during the transition from the period of “nuclear race” to the “policy of detente.”

Keywords: Ukrainian philosophy, Kyiv philosophical school, Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Oral History of Philosophy, T. Chaika, P. Kopnin, M. Honcharenko, S. Krymskyi, V. Horskyi, V. Lisovyi, Y. Stratii

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Vdovychenko, Heorhii (2021) Kyiv Philosophical School as a Partner of International Scientific Life during the Cold War: The Experience of Dialogue in Geopolitical Confrontation. Future Human Image, Volume 15, 117-130. https://doi.org/10.29202/fhi/15/11
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