Documenting the History of Religions in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1950-1970): Letters, Reports and Requests across the Iron Curtain

The present volume offers a new account of the activities of the International Association for the History of Religions during the Cold War. By focusing on the IAHR membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1957, the book reconsiders the impact of the Iron Curtain . Valerio Severino examines unpublished international correspondences, bureaucratic requests, confidential reports submitted by the delegates after their participation in congresses in Western Europe and the USA. Facts and insights about leading Hungarian scholars and internal processes of the IAHR are reconstructed in detail. Through doing so, Severino is able to evaluate the permeability of the Iron Curtain, the exchange of knowledge between the opposing blocs, the ideological control exercised through the Academy and the ways in which academics subjected their work to this obligation.