Soviet Sociology Research Articles

The Soviet Sociology of Sport: Start and . . . Start Once Again (Subjective Notes with a Claim to Objectivity)

The two main stages of the formation and development of the Soviet sociology of sport, the first, covering the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, and the second covering the 1960-1980s, are considered in the paper. It is noted in the introduction that although the Soviet sociology of sport as one of the branches within sociological science of that time in general has an interesting prehistory in the early Soviet years and a rich history of development in the middle of the last century, it has not yet received adequate coverage in the works on the history of the development of this science. The reason may be that in the traditional opposition between “the high” (spiritual) and “the low” (corporeal), the body practices are classified as “second-rate”. The authors sought to eliminate the existing “lacuna” by conducting a brief analysis of the Soviet stage of the development of the sociology of sport. The features of each of the stages (the main vectors of development of the national sociology of sports, dominants, and their transformations) are considered in the context of the time. The authors based their research on sources such as the relative publications reflecting the theme characteristic for each period, as well as some “living memories”, both of their own and of some other participants in the events. These sources could give birth to a certain element of subjectivism, already reflected in the subtitle of the article.

З.И. Файнбург: «Жизнь моя была тяжела, но не была бременем»

The life and work of one of the creators of Soviet sociology, Professor Zakhar I. Faynburg, is remembered by his son — Grigory Z. Faynburg, as well as his colleagues and friends Yuri R. Vishnevsky and Garold E. Zborovsky. Interviews with them was conducted by Boris Z. Doktorov.

СУСПІЛЬСТВО РАДЯНСЬКОЇ УКРАЇНИ НА ПОЧАТКУ ВЕЛИКОЇ ВІТЧИЗНЯНОЇ ВІЙНИ: СТАН РОЗРОБКИ НАУКОВОЇ ПРОБЛЕМИ

The article deals with the formation of historiographical knowledge of Soviet society in the early period of Great Patriotic War. The historiographical researches on this subject are analyzed. The periodizations of historiography of Soviet society in 1941–1942 are defined and explanations of criteria of such periodization are examined. The essential characteristics of each historiographical period and mistakes of some historiographical schools are defined. The priorities of research in the field of study of the history and historiography of Soviet society of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War are defined. The first period in the development of historiography of the initial level of the Great Patriotic War concerning Ukraine falls on 1940–1950s. The characteristics of historiography features of this period are the following: dogmatic views on the events, submission of major conclusions about the war to ideological and political determinants; ignoring negative aspects inherent to Soviet society. The second period covers the events of 1950–1980s. The characteristic features of this period are the following: the creation of a new historical myth of hypertrophied role of parties in the War; the priority development of macro-historical studies; bias of memoir literature; absolutisation of spiritual unity of Soviet society. At the same time, this period characterizes first attempts of critical reflection of the tragic outbreak of war, the role of the Stalinist repressions of the army high command. The third period of Soviet historiography falls on 1980–1990s. This period characterizes a number of contradictory traits. The weakening of ideological censorship and restrictions on open announcements of tragic military confrontation led to the emergence of revisionist historiography direction; empowering access to documentary base of limited access archives created conditions for both objective historical research, and overtly speculative publications. Excessive politicization of historical science has caused the appearance of two vectors — traditional and revisionist. Post-Soviet historiography is based on the recognition of the many achievements of Soviet historiography, on the critics of separate provisions (dogmatism, the principle of partisanship, omission of certain negative aspects of the CPSU (b), government security forces). The Ukrainian state of the development of historiography problems covers a timeframe from 1991 to nowadays. This process is marked by a wide range of pluralistic views on our recent past and a number of features, at first, an attempt to create its own national historical narrative by a fundamental reassessment of the past. Thus, the study of Soviet society in the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was carried out within the conventional scheme: social and professional substructure, society and government, USSR armed forces, which can be explained by errors of Soviet sociology, which actually denied the existence of antagonistic groups in the USSR society. From the present point f view, the study of historiography of Soviet society allows the consideration of this phenomenon in two interrelated dimensions. Firstly, it is an argued comprehensive analysis of Soviet historiography,the rejection of nihilistic attitude to its heritage. Secondly, the widespread involvement of foreign historiography, especially the one, which uses German archives and oral sources of the European origin, that will be useful in the verification of certain interpretations of the life of Soviet society of 1941–1942.

Understanding Professionalism in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: an Analytical Review

This article is a historical and sociological study of occupations and professions in the Soviet Union and Russia, and it shows how political, economic and academic contexts influenced the development of the sociology of professions in Russia. The article includes the description of three periods in the development of Soviet professionalism: the post-revolutionary period, the post-World War II period and the period of “perestroika” initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, and the market reform period of 1990–2000’s. I pay special attention to the reconstruction of the history of the Soviet and Russian sociology of professions that developed studies professions and occupations beginning in the 1920’s, with a gap in the 1930–40’s, and that started new researches since the liberalization period of Soviet history in late 1950’s. Soviet sociology was always under ideological pressure but it had a rich experience of studies of the Soviet social and professional structure. During the 1960’s Soviet sociology was based on ideas selected from the Parsonian version of sociological understanding of social structure. The subsequent collapse of the USSR, and the active civil democratization with market reforms in the post-Soviet Russian economy contributed to the rapid transformation of the occupational system and revealed new opportunities for sociological studies of occupations and professions. The purpose of this article is to show the place of the study of professionalism in Soviet and contemporary Russian sociology, and to outline the scientific and media discourses about professionalism in post-Soviet Russia.

Издавая «СоцИс», или Проблема легитимности в советской социологии

In this article, we consider journals as organizations from neo-institutional organizational theory (W. Powell, P. DiMaggio, J. Meyer, and B. Rowan). An editorial office as an organization has to solve the problem of legitimacy. In the case of the Soviet journal “Sotsiologicheskiye issledovaniya” (“SotsIs”), the only specifically sociological journal in the USSR, it was done by matching journal headings to the official ideology of Soviet sociology. Drawing on an analysis of the journal headings for the Soviet period (1974-1991), I argue that structural divisions of the journal space reflected legitimate meanings of the Soviet sociology as a discipline which was created for increasing the ideological and administrative efficiency of the Soviet government. Journal categories were a signal of loyalty, which was required for the organization’s survival. During years of social and political changes, the role of the journal has changed. The journal has tried to attract general educated readers as well as visibly demonstrate this commitment to public issues by imitation of the evident features of ‘thick’ magazines and newspapers. In spite of all its changes, the journal has continued to depend on the meaning of sociology as a study of social problems. Externally given classifications have played a principal role in choosing an organizational form for searching and evaluating manuscripts. When the editorial office has clear tasks related to the content of the journal, the most appropriate form is the network form of governance because external reviewing makes it difficult to fill journal space. The organization has to use quasi-reviewing, which performs the function of bringing ‘raw’ manuscripts to contribute to the facade of the journal. The history of the Soviet “SotsIs” is a history of an organization, in which the content was tightly controlled, while control of the evaluation of manuscripts remained on the periphery.

Проблематизация социального контроля в Советской социологии: социокультурная детерминированность теоретизирования

Проблематизация социального контроля в Советской социологии: социокультурная детерминированность теоретизирования

The History of Sociological Research on Occupations and Professions in the USSR 1960-80s: Ideological Frameworks and Analytical Resources

The article analyzes of the content and context of research on occupations and professions in Soviet sociology from 1960 to the 1980s. It describes the key topics of observations of professional groups, gives definitions of occupations and professions in Soviet social sciences, and analyzes ideological and censorship restrictions for research and publishing. Sociology of occupations and professions as a separate disciplinary field appeared in Russia only in the late 1990s. Before this time, these topics were integrated into social structure and social stratification observations, research of the working class, intelligentsia, industrial sociology and sociology of organizations. From the 1960s Soviet sociologists searched for new explanatory models and they decided that socio-professional groups were the best criterion for a Soviet social structure description. During 1970-80s researchers of Soviet social structures debated about the place of professional groups. This article analyzes these and other features of sociology of occupations and professions in the USSR. The analysis is based on the bibliographical observations and interviews with Soviet sociologists. This project was supported by Science Foundation of NRU HSE.

“Scientific Atheism” in Action

This paper discusses the methodological challenges of Soviet sociology of religion in the period between 1960 and 1989, when it was charged with the contradictory task of investigating the actual standing of religion in Soviet society and, at the same time, with proposing methods through which the official “scientific atheism,” deeply rooted in Marxism, could be imposed upon the very populations that were the subject of its inquiries. The authors propose an insight into the actual practices of the researchers, based on little-known archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. The materials adduced by the authors show the various ways in which Soviet believers were surveyed and in which questionnaires were constructed, illustrating the modes of argumentation used in atheist propaganda conducted alongside such surveys, and giving a rare glimpse into the methodological discussions that were taking place at conferences organized by the Institute of Scientific Atheism. The authors track also the sociological conceptions and typologies adopted by Soviet sociology.

Justice, Inequality, and the Market: Soviet Sociology in the Transition to Capitalism

This essay examines the role played by Soviet sociology in the USSR’s transition to capitalism. It analyzes the discipline’s contribution to the critique of Soviet socio-economic life during the 1980s, identifying the emergence of two divergent viewpoints within Soviet sociology over the relationship between inequality, the market, and the goals of a socialist society. The essay explores how these viewpoints intersected with the implementation of economic reforms by the Gorbachev regime, arguing that the dominant forces within Soviet sociology ultimately helped the party-state bureaucracy craft the legitimizing ideology of perestroika by insisting that growing social inequality and market-based mechanisms of distribution were the very embodiment of socialism. After enduring a politically fraught and semi-pariah existence for much of its history, Soviet sociology enjoyed a belle epoque as it helped the ruling elite navigate the transition to capitalism.

Рынки труда, стратификация и карьеры в советской социологии

Рынки труда, стратификация и карьеры в советской социологии

"Советская социология была похожа на двугорбого верблюда"

"Советская социология была похожа на двугорбого верблюда"

The Transformation of the Social Structure of Russian Society

Studies of social structure and stratification in prerevolutionary Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet sociology are remarkable in several respects.

A Death Certificate

In August 1993, Professor Vladimir Shubkin, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, celebrated his seventieth birthday. Professor Shubkin's name is associated with the revival of Soviet sociology in the 1960s. One of the creators of the Siberian school of sociology, he established a number of new directions in the theory and methodology of research. His books Quantitative Methods in Sociology, Sociological Experiments, and The Beginning of the Road are standards of scientific analysis of social problems.

A FINAL LOOK BACK AT SOVIET SOCIOLOGY

Soviet sociology must be understood against the background of the Soviet empire which provided its frame of reference as well as most of its substantive topics of enquiry. Sociology in the USSR benefitted from the weakening of totalitarian control in the 1980s. It became possible to develop and express ideas with relative freedom, i.e., controlled by the state in order to halt the rapid dissolution of the ecological and social fabric. Sociologists were in demand to start empirical research, especially on social crises and public opinion. A somewhat technocratic version of sociology focussing on the economy and social stratification came to be officially tolerated as a major contribution to stabilising the remaining Soviet state policy in the period of perestroika. With the total collapse of the Soviet empire, however, this imperial sociology has lost its raison d'être. The vacuum left by the demise of the empire, in which a civil society has not yet developed, is parallelled by an intellectual vacuum in post-totalitarian sociology. This is only gradually being filled by a regionalisation of sociology in the various new states and its continued internationalisation by professional sociology (especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg). Social research into all aspects of political and social life is spreading throughout the territory of the former empire.

The First Congress of the Soviet Sociological Association

The First Congress of the Soviet Sociological Association

Perestroika and Soviet Sociology

Perestroika and Soviet Sociology

A Word About the Change from Soviet Sociology to Sociological Research: A Journal of Translations from Russian

With the final disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the title Soviet Sociology suddenly belonged to history. After considering all the unsatisfactory alternatives, the editors and I have decided to rename the journal Sociological Research: A Journal of Translations from Russian. Most of the translations appearing in the journal will be from Russian-language sources, but translations from other languages will certainly not be excluded, and we will make a positive effort to present the work of sociologists from, and about, all areas of the former Soviet Union.

Author Index to Soviet Sociology Volume 30 (January-December 1991)

Author Index to <i>Soviet Sociology</i> Volume 30 (January-December 1991)

Editor's Introduction

Serious Soviet scholars have long sought to extend the intellectual and ideological framework of Soviet sociology beyond the narrow confines of textbook Marxism. While this process has been under way for decades, it has obviously accelerated in recent years. One illustration is provided by A. G. Zdravomyslov's discussion of the various ways in which the concept of rationality has been used in the sociological literature ("The Principle of Rationality in Contemporary Sociological Theory"). Zdravomyslov examines the variety of meanings attached to rationality in the writings of Marx, Weber, Habermas, and others. Of special interest is the author's distinctly positive assessment of Weber's thesis of the paradox of rationality, the view that "the growth of rationality in all spheres of social life results not in emancipation but in increased dependence on the rules and norms of bureaucratized structures." In this connection Zdravomyslov cites Weber's highly skeptical attitude toward socialism, which he associated with the triumph of bureaucracy—"by no means a nonsensical prediction, as it turned out." When this article was published, Zdravomyslov was still a department head of the Institute of Marxisim-Leninism attached to the party's central committee, but holding such a position was apparently not incompatible with an appeal for assimilating "the achievements of all schools of sociological thought."

From Statocracy to the Evolution of Civil Society

Last autumn in Moscow a conference of the International Sociological Association took place—for the first time in our country—with the participation of two of its committees (the sociology of labor committee and the sociology of urban and regional development committee) on the theme Self-management and social protection of workers in the city and in the enterprise. The Soviet Sociological Association, the S. Ordzhonikidze Institute of Management in Moscow (where the conference was held), the Society of Architects of the USSR and the scientific-and-technical cooperative Perspektiva organized the conference.