The 1997 annual ISHA (International Students of History Association) conference was held in Wroclaw, between April 7th - April 12th, being organised by ISHA Wroclaw with the help of the International Secretariat. As always, the participants were numerous, representing most of the sections of ISHA : the conference prospectus included some 200 students who announced their participation, from 22 states - Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Lome, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States (I hope I didn’t omit anyone). Inevitably, not all of them attended the conference but even so the large number of guests could have been a problem for some less attentive organisers. This was not the case, however, and the conference went just fine.
 The very generous topic - Religion through history - contributed to a successful exchange of ideas. It was thus avoided a situation which occurred, for example, at the previous ISHA conference, "Man and Nature", Vienna 1996, when some of the participants complained about the emphasis which was placed on the ecological side of the problem. The variety of themes approached was reflected in the number of workshops : 1.Religion and politics, 2.Religion and culture, 3.Monks, 4.Primitive and extinguished religions, 5.Sects, 6.Religious persecutions, 7.Forms of religious cult, 8.Main religious ideas, 9.Man and religion. It was noticeable, however, the prevalent interest in the relation between politics and religion, which made the first workshop be separated in two sections, due to the large number of participants. Some other workshops enjoyed a smaller audience and finished their work earlier - for example, the fifth workshop, Sects. A positive fact was the attempt to make, from the very beginning, a clear definitions of the key-terms : religion, church, faith. In the end, each workshop presented a summary of its works in the general assembly.
 There were almost 200 hundred essays presented and this makes almost impossible to give a clear picture of the conference. I would rather refer to the works of the workshop I attended, "Religion and politics". Some very interesting essay were discussed and I will only quote The invasion of the Theutonic Order to the pagan Lithuania, by Adomas Katinas, ISHA Vilnius, Public control of prostitution in the 16th century towns, by Nicole Brauch, ISHA Heidelberg and Relations between politics and religion in Slovakia at the end of the 16th c. and the beginning of the 17th c. by Dalibor Mikulas, ISHA Presov. But there were also very schematic presentations, which, I will dare to say, lacked originality. And there were a few incoherent presentations, which made no point at all. Discussing those essays was a hard task because any criticism was misinterpreted. With the risk of being subjective, I will allow myself some personal opinions. Being the first ISHA conference I was attending, I had my expectations. I knew that I would hear interesting viewpoints and different ways of approaching historical problems, but I had hoped for some accuracy in expressing those viewpoints. In this second matter I was disappointed. Only few essays were based on solid evidences. Furthermore, the audience seemed to be content with all the explanations provided by the authors. Few people expressed their doubts about the conclusions presented in the various essays. Even fewer people made criticisms and they were not very well regarded by the rest. It looked as if most of the people there had forgotten what history is about. And from what I noticed the rest of the workshops were facing the same problems.
 Of course, despite its drawbacks, the conference was a success. It achieved its primary purpose, that of facilitating the exchange of opinions concerning not only the announced topic, but also various historical problems of common interest. Its works will be published in an ISHA Journal, the collection of contributions to an ISHA conference, which will hopefully be issued until the next ISHA conference, "Revolution?!", Helsinki 1998.
 

Ionut EPURESCU PASCOVICI.
 
 

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