The social science trade (1990–2000): Bibliographical notes

Abstract

Abstract Literature permeates every part of intellectual life in Russia. In the 1980s, an average home library had about three hundred books, most of which were the collected works of Russian classics and ‘progressive’ foreign writers. For sure, literature, art and the social sciences did not mirror our world; rather their purpose was to help compensate for our drab existence. Thus, social knowledge was all about amateur theorising. ‘Elevated’ art, together with social sciences literature, targeted a mass audience and, in so doing, became, as it were, ‘public’ forms of knowledge.