Internationl Congress of Slavists
General Information

The International Congress of Slavists is a quinquennial gathering of Slavists in the humanities and social sciences from forty countries worldwide. It is organized by the International Committee of Slavists (ICS), which consists of the chairs of each of constituent national committees. The full ICS meets during the year of the Congress itself. At other times, the business of the ICS is handled by the full Presidium, which meets once in intervening years to plan the next Congress in detail, or by the reduced Presidium, which meets in other intervening years to act on minor issues that require resolution.

The full Presidium consists of six members from Slavic countries (two each from East, West, and South Slavic lands) and six members from non-Slavic countries (Austria, Canada or France, Germany, Italy, Romania, United States). The reduced Presidium consists of four members: the current Slavic host country, the immediately previous Slavic host country, one other Slavic country, and one non-Slavic country.

The International Congress of Slavists was first held in 1929 in Prague, then in 1934 in Warsaw. World War II precluded the actual meeting of the 1939 Congress planned for Belgrade. The sequence resumed in Moscow in 1958, and continued every five years thereafter: Sofia (1963), Prague (1968), Warsaw (1973), Ljubljana and Zagreb (1978), Kyiv (1983), Sofia (1988), Bratislava (1993), Cracow (1998), Ljubljana (2003), and Ohrid (2008). The XV International Congress of Slavists will be held in Minsk, Belarus, in late summer 2013 (days and month TBA).

The constituent national committees and their quota of delegates for the next Congress (600 total) are provided in the chart below. A small number of additional positions are reserved for delegates from countries without a national committee of Slavists.

The ICS is also responsible for coordinating the work of its constituent field committees, whose international membership is expected to report on research progress in those respective fields at each Congress.