deadline 20 January 2019 Central European University, Budapest 26.04.2019 Going beyond the notion of Communist parties governing East Central Europe after World War 2 as, first, uniform political bodies strictly following the Soviet role-model, and, second, internally monolithic entities engaged in one-directional communication with the societies under their control by means of ideological and political control, the workshop aims to examine the similar-yet-different Communist parties in East Central Europe from an epistemological point of view, focusing on their role in a complex process of learning and teaching about social as well as natural world. The question “how does the party know what it knows” is by no means applicable to Communist parties alone, but it seems especially pertinent in their case, given how closely connected political and epistemological issues were, especially in the Marxist-Leninist tradition. Stalinist Agitprops were well-known guardians of ideological purity and conveyors or “correct positions” of a variety of issues pertaining to both nature and society, but as in the post-Stalinist period the fundamental characteristics of the “authoritative discourse” began to change, the question arose how did the party members (and non-members alike) in this period know what the “correct positions” were, and how were they “trained” politically and ideologically. This was especially important in cases and periods when the party members, and occasionally non-members, too, were supposed to declare themselves on a whole array of ideological issues, while at other times only political loyalty in sense of not challenging the system was expected form them....