From scientific Communism to political science: the development of the profession in selected former Soviet European states

ENIn this chapter, we explore the trajectories of the evolution of political science in four former Soviet Socialist Republics after the collapse of the USSR in 1990–1991. We focus on two Baltic states: the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter Lithuania) and the Republic of Estonia (hereinafter Estonia) which were incorporated into the USSR in June 1940 and which by 2020 have become full-fledged members of the EU, NATO and the OECD; the Republic of Moldova (hereinafter Moldova) which in 1940 became a part of the USSR and re-established its independence in 1991, although a part of its territory (Transnistria) has been under the de facto control of the separatist government since 1990; and, finally, the Republic of Belarus (hereinafter Belarus), the legal successor to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Byelorussian SSR), which gained its independence in 1991 and since the mid-1990s has been involved in a process of integration with Russia. Since the spring of 2020, Belarus’ society has been heroically trying to overthrow the existing dictatorship and to liberalize the country. These four case studies provide a good basis for testing several hypotheses relative to the developments of political science (hereinafter PS) in former Soviet republics and for a nuanced comparison of its institutionalization patterns. In the four country cases, we pay special attention to the context of democratization and to the effects of path dependencies.In this chapter, we analyse the process of PS institutionalization in the period before the 1990s and after the collapse of the USSR. We examine the formation of post-Soviet PS in Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova and Belarus, and in doing so we offer references to the relevant Soviet experiences and practices and explore the different, but also in some respects similar, trajectories of the discipline’s development in these countries. We specifically focus on Belarus as an extreme case of the development of political science in a non-democratic environment. In particular, we investigate the similarities and differences in the current state of the discipline in those four countries, by analysing the formation of its identity and the establishment of its autonomy. In the concluding section, we briefly reflect on the current challenges faced by PS in these four countries. We base our analysis on an institutional approach, and we actively use the descriptive method while exploring the Soviet period and the four country-cases. For each case, we analyse comparable indicators and examine the most prominent features. We realize that when analysing PS developments in post-Soviet countries, one has to deal with several constraints including the lack of information on the local predecessors (institutions and prominent figures) of PS during the Soviet period in Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova and Belarus, and the limitations on open sources when it comes to post-Soviet Belarus.].