Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin as highly cited researchers? Historical bibliometrics study

Abstract The motivation for our research is the view, widespread among Polish scientists, that under Communist Party’s rule it was always necessary to refer Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin (we call them ‘classics’), especially in highly-politicised fields like humanities and social sciences, order work pass censorship procedures be published. Therefore, this paper, we aim determine whether 'classics' were commonly cited a formally socialist country of Party (Polish Workers' Party/Polish United Workers’ Party). To address main question, use Citation Index History Media covers all publications, scholarly articles book on history media; total, 6880 publications 59,827 citations from 1945?2009 period. We found works ‘classics’ ( N = 296) constitute 0.49% database used practice citing extremely rare (just 64 occurrences analysed sample). Our also contributes development reflection historical bibliometrics argues bibliographical databases need cover various types written different languages (not only English).