“PERHAPS YOU HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN OUR MEETING AT OSLO IN 1928”: E.A. Kosminsky’s Letters to H. Cam (1957–1959)

This publication includes Russian translation of the letters written in English and sent by academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, professor of the Moscow State University Evgeny Alekseevich Kosminsky (1886–1959) to the President of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI) Helen Maud Cam, FBA (1885–1968), from 1957 to 1959. This source kept in the personal funds of H.M. Cam in the Archives of Girton College (Cambridge University) is published for the first time. It concerns the official inclusion of the Soviet delegation in the work of the ICHRPI, the issues of the reports of E.A. Kosminsky, other Soviet members of the ICHRPI and scholars from the Central and Eastern Europe at the annual sessions and conferences of this Commission taken place in Paris, Brussels, Innsbruck, Stockholm in 1957–1960. In some letters E.A. Kosminsky discusses with H.M. Cam their dissentions about crucial social and political definitions of the Middle Ages (such as “feudalism” and “monarchy”). In this correspondence the Soviet scholar also pays attention to his passion for gardening and to his health state, which had a tendency to decline and did not allow him to continue the full-scale scholarly work during last three years of his life. Despite some non-disclosured issues in this text (for example, the impossibility of accepting the application of the independent Hungarian delegation to the meetings of the Commission without a confirmation from the Soviet side), the correspondence makes evident a friendly manner and a deep respect from both scholars.

Evgeny A. Kosminsky, Helen Maud Cam, Helmut Koenigsberger, Girton College, International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, International Congresses of Historical Sciences, Anglo-Soviet relationship, Sevenoaks