Socialist Stratification and Sociological Survival

Vaughan, Michalina

doi:10.2307/590352

Cited by 2 publications

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“…In the 1930s, Stalin labeled sociology a ‘bourgeois science’ and shut down all the country’s sociology departments. This coincided with the purging of statisticians in state agencies and the widespread falsification of government data (Vaughan, 1986). The party-state bureaucracy was hostile to any investigation of Soviet socio-economic development and social-class relations, particularly given the disastrous consequences of its collectivization campaign on the countryside (Novikova, 1996) and its efforts to pin responsibility for deteriorating conditions on ‘Trotskyite wreckers’.…”

Section: Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The party-state bureaucracy was hostile to any investigation of Soviet socio-economic development and social-class relations, particularly given the disastrous consequences of its collectivization campaign on the countryside (Novikova, 1996) and its efforts to pin responsibility for deteriorating conditions on ‘Trotskyite wreckers’. Furthermore, sociological data on social inequality ‘embarrassed the leadership by stressing the gap between the highly differentiated system of rewards and the professed ideal of the Party’ (Vaughan, 1986: 157). Many of those involved in the sociological research and theoretical debates of the 1920s ended up victims of state repression.…”

Section: Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Grant-Friedman

2013

Critical Sociology

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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.

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Section: Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Grant-Friedman

2013

Critical Sociology

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“…According to certain prognoses the leadership made at one time or another, they should have disappeared by now. For this reason, research in stratification is a high priority, but stratification evidently a malady of the bourgeois world-is always designated by the euphemism "social structure"(Rutkevich 1978b; see alsoMatthews 1980, Vaughan 1986) . Another theoretical article deals with the social structure of science .…”

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confidence: 99%

Soviet Sociology and Sociology in the Soviet Union

Greenfeld

1988

Annu. Rev. Sociol.

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The core of the paper is an analysis of the meaning of sociology in the USSR, as defined by the participants and outsiders alike. The review is based on the study of programmatic statements , the character of references in sociological writings, and available biographical information on their authors . All of these help to locate Soviet sociology within the intellectual enterprise in general and to establish whether it is actually a counterpart of what is called "sociology" in the West, or a different branch of intellectual activity which for some reason uses its name. Most of the findings are derived fr om an analysis of Sot siogicheskie Issledovania (Sociological Research), the only specifically sociological journal in the USSR, published since 1974. These findings are compared with parallel observations on representative samples of the Amer ican J oumal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review. The conclu sion is that Soviet sociology, although it uses some of the methods of Western sociology , is an activity of a different nature on the whole. It is a branch of social technology, a managerial science oriented towards the promotion of the goals and the increase of the ideological and administrative efficiency of the Soviet government. At the same time, the review draws attention to sociologically significant work in other areas of Soviet scholarship, particularly ethnography. It sug gests that under the conditions of ideological control of social sciences obtaining in the USSR, sociology is more likely to develop in areas which, like ethnography, are regarded by the authorities as esoteric and inoffensive, rather than in the discipline called "sociology" there .99

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Socialist Stratification and Sociological Survival

Cited by 2 publications

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

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

Soviet Sociology and Sociology in the Soviet Union

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