The Transformation of Historiography in Communist Eastern Europe: Ideology, Institutions, and National Narratives

Following the communist ascendancy in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia in 1944-45, the established discipline of history was subjected to a profound ideological re-engineering. Prior to this, with the exception of Albania, historiography in the region was an institutionalized, “scientific” field deeply intertwined with Romantic nationalism and nation-building, exemplified by scholar-politicians like Stojan Novaković in Serbia and Nicolae Iorga in Romania. The new regimes sought to sever this link and construct a “communist history” based on Soviet models, dialectical materialism, and a Marxist periodization of history. This mandated a focus on the Communist Party, the working class, and internationalism, while demanding the denunciation of the pre-socialist past and the glorification of the Soviet Union.

The implementation of this radical shift required purging academic institutions and establishing new ideological controls. Universities were cleansed of “bourgeois” or “fascist” historians, though the severity varied; Romania’s purge was particularly harsh, leading to the imprisonment of prominent figures like Constantin C. Giurescu and Victor Papacostea. A critical shortage of trained Marxist historians, however, forced regimes to compromise, retaining compliant members of the old guard while pinning long-term hopes on a new indoctrinated generation. To facilitate this, new research structures were created, mirroring the Soviet system by centralizing authority within Academies of Sciences. Institutes such as the Institute for Bulgarian History (1947) and reorganized sections within the Romanian Academy (1948) were tasked with producing the new “scientific” national history.

The project of writing a communist master narrative faced unique challenges in each country. In Romania, under the direction of Mihail Roller, the new synthesis aggressively rewrote the national story to emphasize Slavic roots and Russian friendship, directly countering the traditional Latinist thesis of Romanian origins. His textbook, Istoria Republicii Populare Române, epitomized this Sovietized history. In Bulgaria, the Istoriia na Bŭlgariia (1954-55) provided a short-lived orthodox narrative stressing Slavic kinship and the guiding role of the communists. Yugoslavia presented a special case, as the need to forge a unified history for its diverse nations proved immensely difficult. Collaborative projects like the multi-volume Istorija naroda Jugoslavije ultimately foundered on irreconcilable interpretations of nineteenth-century national movements among the republics’ historians.

Despite the intense ideological pressure, traditional historiography never fully disappeared. A pragmatic division of labor often emerged. In Yugoslavia, pre-war historians like Fran Zwitter and Jorjo Tadić were reintegrated into universities, focusing on distant, less politically charged periods, while dedicated Institutes for the History of the Labour Movement handled the sensitive founding myths of the Partisan struggle and the Communist Party. Elsewhere, non-committed historians survived by paying lip service to Marxist-Leninist dogma through selective quotations while producing substantive, source-based work on neutral topics or engaging in critical source publication. Thus, beneath the surface of imposed Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, older national paradigms and scholarly methods persisted, often disguised but resilient.

In regions without a strong pre-war academic tradition, such as Albania and Macedonia, historiography was built from the ground up as an explicit tool of communist-led nation-building. The founding of the Institute for Sciences in Tirana (1947) and the Institute for National History in Skopje (1948) placed historians like Aleks Buda at the forefront of crafting national narratives within a rigid ideological framework. Similarly, later institutions in Kosovo, like the Institute for History of Kosovo (1967), promoted distinct national perspectives within the Yugoslav federation. Ultimately, the communist period created a constant tension between the internationalist demands of ideology and the enduring power of the national frame, a duality that would decisively shape historical writing long after the regimes themselves had fallen.