EN
The essay is aiming to discuss the reason of decay of the International Commitee for the Study of Folk Culture in the Carpathians and the Balkans, which was the only one international academic organisation of the ethnologists from the European Communist countries. The author's perspective is based on his personal experience with the different levels of the Commitee from the late 1970s until the beginning of the 1990s. The author analyses character of the work and hierarchy within the Commitee, and is looking for the explanation, why such an originally active scientific organisation was not able to survive.