Three Metacontingencies in the Pre-Perestroika Soviet Union

Abstract

The field of behavior analysis progressively has expanded its horizons. In the 1930s and 40s, it focused on molecular responses of birds and small mammals. The 1950s and 60s witnessed an expansion to consideration of primate behavior, including that of humans. The 1970s and 80s experienced the behavioral community psychology emphasis, which investigated behavior and its controlling contingencies within the context of the social network that characterizes· communities. As the 1990s begin, behavior analysis has matured to the point where it can go beyond Skinner's early discussions of large scale social processes (1953, 1971), and consider, in increasingly sophisticated manners, the contingencies that societies impose on their members and the functional relationship of these contingencies to the behavior of their constituents. The interest in behavior analysis on a societal level has been manifested in two directions. Some writers have developed cogent theoretical perspectives and general analyses. Malagodi (1986), Malott (1988), Segal (1987), and Glenn (1986, 1988) exemplify this focus. Glenn, in particular, has been working systematically to integrate behavioral theory with cultural materialism, an anthropological perspective developed by Harris (1979). Other writers, observing the aetna! developments in the world, have been drawn to the widespread social, political, and economic modif"tcations that have been implemented by various socialist countries. Lama!, for example, analyzed the contingencies extant in China (1984) and I have focused on Hungary (Rakos, 1988a) and on socialism in general (Rakos, 1988b, 1989, in press), prompting lively debate with Uhnan (1988, 1989). The two articles -in this section continue this latter emphasis by presenting behavior analyses of -~oviet society before, and then under, the perestroika (economic restructuring) that was implemented in the mid 1980s. Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign and domestic policy initiatives have captured the imagination and admiration of statesmen and women, and of ordinary citizens, throughout the world. The Soviet Union is, of course, the most important socialist player in global political and economic manuevers, though China will no doubt