“It’s funny that the war and peaceful philosophy live side by side”: I.V. Kuznetsov’s letters from the war

The article is the first to introduce into scientific use a corpus of unique historical sources, the letters written by a renowned Soviet philosopher and historian of science, Ivan Vasilievich Kuznetsov (1911–1970), to his wife and son during the period from 1941 to 1943. The materials under consideration shed light on the everyday side of communication between the young couple, thrown far away from each other, as well as on some aspects of professional communication of a scientific community during the Great Patriotic War. Based on the analysis of the documents, an attempt is made to reconstruct a little-known episode from I.V. Kuznetsov’s biography – working as an editor for the publishing house of technico-theoretical literature – and a major shift in his professional career from theoretical physics to the philosophy and history of science. The conclusion is made about the importance of epistolary legacy of philosophers and historians of science for better understanding the processes of the institutionalization of the history of science and technology in the USSR.