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Sociology in Eastern Europe: Trends and Prospects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Bogdan Denitch
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Extract

The Seventh World Congress of Sociologists in Varna, Bulgaria, held in September 1970, marked a major stage in the development of social science, particularly sociology, in the one-party states of Eastern Europe. Taking place in the most orthodox country of an increasingly diverse bloc, the congress was characterized by the largest and best-organized participation to date of sociologists from Eastern Europe. One country in the area—Albania—did not participate at all; and Yugoslavia, which is probably the country with the most developed social science community and institutions, had a notably small delegation. Yet the fact is that for prestige reasons, if no other, the East European countries and the Soviet Union did their best to show the state of their current development of sociology. This was shown in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Most delegates presented papers.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 317 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

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References

1. Attendance was increased because the congress was held in Bulgaria, if for no other reason than the problem of convertibility of funds which plagues East European social science institutions. Nevertheless, any comparison with attendance figures at the previous world congresses will show that an enormous qualitative leap in attendance is involved (see John Shippee, Empirical Sociology in East European Communist Party States, Research Paper no. 12, Stanford Studies of the Communist System, November 1966, p. 31A; I cite this work with some hesitation, because it is generally so poor and inaccurate as to verge on the scandalous). This is a reflection of the increasing legitimacy of the discipline.

2. Pavel Machonin et al., Československá spoleČnost : Sociologická analysa sociálni stratifikace (Bratislava, 1970). The study was carried out in 1967 and is both thorough and sophisticated. A manuscript of a translation was prepared in London in 1969, the fate of which I do not know.

3. Miloš Kalab, Le Mat;érialisme historique et la conception marxiste de la sociologie, Proceedings, VII World Congress of the ISA (Varna, 1970). See also “A propos de la problématique des élites et de la formation de l'opinion publique dans la république socialiste de Tchécoslovaquie,” L'Homme et la Societe, no. 14, October-December 1969.

4. While I think that the situation of sociology has retrogressed in Czechoslovakia, sociologists there are still in a good position to resume their advance. During the preceding period a number of competent sociologists were trained who can, given a change in the political climate, advance the discipline relatively rapidly.

5. Paul Lazarsfeld, “Sociology,” in Main Trends of Research in Social and Human Sciences (Paris and The Hague : Mouton and UNESCO, 1970), pp. 94-103.

6. An even more serious difficulty with the Lazarsfeld piece is to be found in the lengthy footnote (n. 29a) which cites “works of Marxist inspiration dealing with general sociological problems,” citing uncritically in turn an article by Professor Fedoseev of the USSR. The only works referred to, of course, are by Soviet sociologists. It would cause considerable surprise among the far more prolific and significant Polish and Yugoslav sociologists to be informed that Marxist sociology is Russian sociology.

7. Jerzy, Wiatr, Political Sociology in Eastern Europe (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1965 Google Scholar (Current Sociology, vol. 13, no. 2). This book is a discussion of the trends and a bibliography.

8. Erich Hahn and Horst Taubert, “Marxist Leninist Sociology in the GDR,” in Sociological Research in the German Democratic Republic (Berlin, 1970), p. 9.

9. Ibid., p. 10.

10. Manfred Lotsch, Hansgunter Meyer, and Horst Taubert, in Sociological Research, pp. 61-72.

11. Michal liner and Helena Steinova, Materials in the Sociological Archives of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science (mimeographed, 1970), a translation of an article that appeared in the Czech Sociological Journal in the fall of 1969.

12. Among others see Radovan Richta, La Civilisation an carrefour (Paris : Anthropos, 1969; an English version, Civilization at the Crossroads, appeared in 1969, International Arts and Sciences Press, White Plains); Robert Kalivoda, Marx et Freud (Paris : Anthropos, 1968). See especially the edition of L'Homme et la Société, no. 9, July-September 1968, “Sociologie tchécoslovaque et renouveau de la pensée marxiste, “ as well as the other issues of this journal, and the special edition of Autogestion, no. 11- 12, 1969, “Conseils ouvriers en Tchécoslovaquie.” Working Papers of the International Study of Opinion-Makers, vol. 2 (Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, B. Denitch, etc.), has two papers on a Czechoslovak study of elites by V. Lamser and M. Kalab. See also issues of the East European Series of the IASP, White Plains, particularly Czech Economic Papers and East European Studies in Sociology and Anthropology.

13. In East Germany, however, sociological research goes through the Scientific Council for Sociological Research in the GDR, established at the end of 1964.

14. For the French translations, the best publisher is Anthropos in Paris. See especially András Hegedűs, Études sociologiques (Paris, 1969), which includes works by Hegedűs, Lukács, György and Maria Markus, Erdei, Heller, Ferge, Konrad, and others. See also the contributions by Hegedűs, Markus, and Szesztay in Lauwe, ed., Aspirations et transformations sociales (Paris, 1970). Besides the articles in the New Hungarian Quarterly, there is of course in English the excellent, if somewhat old-fashioned rural study, Proper Peasants. Also, Egon Szabady has published extensively abroad, including Hungarian Fertility and Family Planning Study of 1965-66, IPPF Conference (Copenhagen, 1966), Preventive Medicine and Family Planning (Hertford, 1967), “La Population des pays socialistes européens,” Population (1966), and so forth.

15. See his Études sociologiques, cited in note 14, and La Structure de la société socialiste (Paris : Anthropos, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1967).

16. For the Varna Congress, the Academy of Social and Political Sciences in Bucharest issued in 1970 The Romanian Sociological Abstracts (125 pp.), which includes a short review of the development of Rumanian sociology.

17. Published by the Academy of Social and Political Sciences, December 1970, as part of a series, this is issue no. 12.

18. Romanian Sociological Abstracts : see the article by Miron Constantinescu (pp. 1-9).

19. Ibid.

20. In addition to a number of meetings with Rumanian sociologists at Varna, I visited the new Academy of Social and Political Sciences in the late fall of 1970. A remark by one of my Rumanian colleagues sums up the present situation, I believe : “Our leaders need a great deal of information about what is happening; the trouble is that many of them do not want to know.“

21. Vassilev, Draganov, and Mikhailov, Sociology in Bulgaria, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia, 1970; in English, 111 pp.). The citation is from page 7.

22. Ibid., p. 21.

23. Ibid, pp. 3S-S3

24. These include : (1) Sociological Information Center of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party; (2) Sociological Survey Center of the Central Trade Unions; (3) Sociological Youth Survey Center of the Central Committee of the Youth Organization; (4) Research Center of Radio and TV (which does whatever opinion research is done); (5) Department of Sociology of Labor in the Ministry of Labor; (6) Military and Sociological Research Center in the Ministry of Defense; (7) Consumers Demands Research Center; (8) Sociological Research Center at the Bulgarian Book State Trust; (9) Sociology of Sports Research Center (at the Ministry of Sports); (10) Crime Research Council at the Chief Prosecutor's Office; (11) Central Committee for Combating Juvenile Delinquency; and so forth.

25. Compare the latest edition of the reader on stratification by S. M. Lipset and Reinhard Bendix with the original edition. (Social Mobility in Industrial Society). Other accessible works by Polish sociologists, in addition to Wiatr, Political Sociology in Eastern Europe, include Szczepánski, Jan, Polish Society (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Adam, Schaff, Langage el connaissance (Paris : Anthropos, 1969 Google Scholar; Szczepánski, Jan, Prob-Ihnes sociologiques de I'enseignement supérieur en Pologne (Paris : Anthropos, 1969 Google Scholar; and Markiewicz-Lagneau, Janina, Éducation, ègalité et socialisme (Paris : Anthropos, 1968 Google Scholar. A number of important articles appeared in L'Homme et la Société, particularly Jan Szczepánski, “La Sociologie marxiste empirique,” no. 1, 1966. An excellent analytical article, although somewhat dated, is Leopold Labedz, “Sociology and Social Change, “ Survey, no. 60, July 1966, which discussed East European sociology with special attention to Poland. See also Zygmunt, Baumann, “Economic Growth, Social Structure, Elite Formation : The Case of Poland,” International Social Science Journal, 16, no. 2 (1964) : 203–16 Google Scholar; Ostrowski, Krzysztof and Przeworski, Adam, “A Preliminary Inquiry into the Nature of Social Change : The Case of the Polish Countryside,” International Journal of Comparative, Sociology, 8 (1967) : 25–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jerzy, Wiatr, “Politics and Social Change : Poland,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 7 (1966) : 237–46.Google Scholar

26. Miroslav Pečujlić has primarily been involved in research on social stratification and social change. His Klase i savremeno drustvo [Classes and Contemporary Society] (Belgrade, 1967) is a standard textbook on the subject. In 1967 he launched a major “macro-project” to study the changes in the social structure in contemporary Yugoslavia.

27. International Social Science Journal, vol. 13, no. 3 (1961); the issue is mostly devoted to the problem of Yugoslav local government. An up-to-date review of the organizational state of social research is found in the Yugoslav Research Guide.

28. The board includes Zygmunt Baumann, Norman Birnbaum, Ernst Bloch, Thomas Bottomore, Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, Leszek Kołakowski, Henri Lefebvre, Georg Lukács, Serge Mallet, Herbert Marcuse, David Riesman, and Kurt H. Wolff, a mixture of philosophers and sociologists best described as Marxist humanists whose very names are anathema to the party ideologues of the USSR and Eastern Europe.

29. Two good examples are Nebojsa Popov, “Strajkovi u savremenom jugoslovenskom društvu” [Strikes in Contemporary Yugoslav Society], Sociologija, vol. 11, no. 4 (1969), and the round table “Fizionomija jednog strajka” [The Physiognomy of a Strike], Pogledi, vol. 2, no. 3 (1970).

30. The translations are far from being limited to “approved” works; one of the latest translations to appear in Belgrade is Seymour Martin Lipset, The Political Man.

31. Both political sociology and political science are established in Yugoslavia, the latter with three faculties. The published works, too numerous to cite, range from the parliamentary system to problems of political power. While a number of works are normative in character, Pavel Novosel of Zagreb and Milan Matić of Belgrade are empirical political scientists. An interesting work in English is Branko Horvat's An Essay on Yugoslav Society (White Plains, 1970), which, although the product of a leading political economist, is a work of political sociology. See the English edition in Sociologija (1970) for a selection of the major articles from 19S9 to 1969.

32. Vidaković, Zoran, Društvena moć radničke klase [Social Power of the Working Class] (Belgrade, 1970)Google Scholar; Stipe, Suvar, Presek jugoslovenskog društva [The Anatomy of Yugoslav Society] (Zagreb, 1970)Google Scholar; Tadić, Ljubomir, Poredak i sloboda [Social Order and Freedom] (Belgrade, 1967)Google Scholar; Rudi, Supek, Elite i moć [Elites and Power] (Zagreb, in preparation)Google Scholar. Supek and Tadić are members of the Praxis editorial board. Supek's book is based on a comparative study of elites, including Yugoslav political elites. Some of his theses are available in English in Working Papers of the International Study of Opinion-Makers, vols. 2 and 3 (mimeographed), Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University.