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This issue marks the fiftieth anniversary of a journal with a divided identity, as indicated by two consecutive titles. Founded in 1960–1961 as “SST”—Studies in Soviet Thought the journal metamorphosed in 1993 into “SEET”—its present incarnation. As SST the journal was to reflect a clear research methodology defined by its founder, J. M. Bochenski, in his programmatic lead article to SST 1961, 1; “On Soviet Studies.” The Communist world was, according to Bochenski, an exceedingly complex and dynamic reality, though often misrepresented and misunderstood as a result of the woefully inadequate preparation of many of those who undertook to comment on it. He wrote: “Sovietology [both in general and with reference to ‘philosophical sovietology’] is a very difficult field of research (italics in the original). (…) it is a discipline [with] a highly questionable privilege of being loved by a large crowd of dilettantes and cranks. Who is not interested in Communism and in the Soviet Union? Hundred, if not thousands, of people who do not understand a word of Russian, who do not know even the ABCs of the subject and of its methods, [yet] are constantly writing and talking about it.” So great was Bochenski’s conviction with regard to the skills needed to understand the communist phenomenon that he, together with a handful of students and colleagues, established, in 1958, what was to be a unique institution … the Institute of East European Studies attached to the chair of modern and contemporary philosophy in the University of Fribourg. The Institute became a philosophical think tank devoted to careful, systematic research into Soviet thought as well as a training ground for future students of Soviet philosophy.

DOI: 10.1007/s11212-010-9129-4

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