The sociological movement in the U.S.S.R. (1960?1970) and the institutionalization of Soviet sociology

Abstract

Before discussing the subject of this article it should be recaUed that the term 'sociology' had not been in use in the U.S.S.R. during the long period since the October revolution, i.e. the twenties to the sixties. In no one Soviet book or article published before the sixties was the term 'sociology' applied to any discipUne or any form of thinking in the U.S.S.R. The term 'sociology' was applied only to the so-caUed 'bourgeois social science' ? to social phi losophy and sociology in the West. Another well-known fact is that unt? 1960 there were no scientific institu tions or specialized laboratories of applied social research in the U.S.S.R., the activities of which could be called sociological. To be more precise, until 1960 there were no such institutions and laboratories at aU. The few attempts by several enthusiasts to undertake studies in demography, ethnology, social psychology in the twenties and the forties could not be considered as evidence for the existence of social sciences in the U.S.S.R. before the sixties. There were practically no such branches of social science as demography, social psychology, social ecology; there were no empirical social studies of structure, social change, occupational structure, social problems; there were no empirical studies of culture and personality. Prior to the sixties these branches of social knowledge did not exist in the U.S.S.R. So the term 'social sciences' simply had no referent.