Intellectual Itineraries of Academician M. N. Tikhomirov: Czechoslovakia and Hungary

Using the case of M. N. Tikhomirov, this article examines how Soviet historians were present within the intellectual space of “socialist science” in Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. It argues that practices of scholarly interaction were shaped by the interplay of foreign-policy conjuncture, institutionally mediated mechanisms of academic exchange, and researchers’ individual strategies. Drawing on materials from Tikhomirov’s personal papers in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fond 693), the study reconstructs his “intellectual presence” in the region in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the Khrushchev Thaw expanded opportunities for travel abroad and heightened the importance of personal scholarly communication. The Czechoslovak vector of Tikhomirov’s contacts demonstrates mainly episodic, weakly institutionalized ties (Václav Husa, Jaroslav Böhm, Josef Vašica), which rarely developed into sustainable cooperation. A different pattern emerges in the Hungarian case: correspondence and face-to-face encounters with Professor Elemér Mályusz, Academician Erik Molnár, and the young scholar Antal Bartha were embedded in a major publishing initiative centered on the preparation of the Chronicle of Thuróczy. The trajectory of this project reveals a gap between inter-academy agreements and the practical capacities of institutions to implement them. Tikhomirov’s papers not only clarify the geography and composition of his foreign contacts but also illuminate “socialist science” through its human dimension — book exchanges, the coordination of translations and commentaries, and everyday circumstances (health, regimen, and practical hardships) that directly affected the character and intensity of scholarly interaction. The article concludes by outlining avenues for further research, including a broader comparative perspective (contacts with Polish, Romanian, Yugoslav, and East German scholars) and a microhistorical analysis of how epistolary and project-based practices reshaped the role of Soviet historians in Eastern Europe’s intellectual landscape.