Social Sciences in the Soviet Union

1944 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir D. Kazakevich
Author(s):  
Aleksa Jovanović

Constructivism is a term that takes up more space in social sciences since the second half of the 20th century, although the term itself was coines earlier, specifically in the 1920s when it signified an artistic and architectural movement in the Soviet Union. One assumption of this paper is that the activity is a central function and it is implanted in the concept of constructivism since its creation. This paper offers a brief overview of the development of term constructivism and later explains the basic epistemological assumptions on which constructivist theories are based. What is common to all constructivist theories is proactive cognition, that is, the already mentioned activity, in this case, in the process of making a meaning. Theories of adult education zhat rely on constructivist epistemology are also presented. Finally, the paper explanis the understanding of activity in teaching and the application of the constructivist principle in teaching.


Author(s):  
Ngoc Son Bui

This book seeks to fill the academic gap in the existing literature on comparative constitutional law by examining how and why five current socialist countries (China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam) have changed their constitutions after the fall of the Soviet Union. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach which integrates comparative constitutional law with social sciences (particularly political science and sociology), this book explores and explains: the progressive function; institutional and socio-economic causes; legal forms, processes, and powers; and five variations (universal, integration, reservation, exceptional, and personal) of socialist constitutional change. It uses qualitative methodology, including the support of fieldwork. It contributes to a better understanding of dynamic socioeconomic, legal, and constitutional change in socialist countries and comparative constitutional law and theory, generally.


1951 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela N. Wrinch

In the Soviet Union, views on all intellectual subjects—the social sciences, philosophy, and even the biological and physical sciences—are frequently regarded as expressions of political views. As a consequence, all intellectual fields are considered appropriate arenas for the struggle against “reaction” and other supposed manifestations of “bourgeois” ideology. To consider science a-political and supra-national, or to speak approvingly of “world science” or “world culture,” is to subscribe to the “bourgeois” ideology of “cosmopolitism”—an ideology which is assumed by virtue of its universalist emphasis to deprecate the contributions to culture made by individual nations.


1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryeh L. Unger

The article attempts to explicate the meaning of “Sovietology.” It traces the origins of the term and discusses the uses to which it has been put in the scholarly literature. Two different meanings have been attached to the term. One reflects the understanding of Sovietology as the study of Soviet politics; the other views it as a “basket” of several, variously specified, disciplines in the social sciences and—less often—the humanities, distinguished by a common area orientation. The resultant ambiguity has blurred Sovietology's disciplinary identity. Now that the record of Western scholarship on the Soviet Union has become the subject of critical scrutiny and debate, it is especially important that the meaning of “Sovietology” be clearly stipulated.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Boldyrev ◽  
Martin Kragh

Research within the history of economic thought has focused only little on the development of economics under dictatorship. This paper attempts to show how a country with a relatively large and internationally established community of social scientists in the 1920s, the Soviet Union, was subjected to repression. We tell this story through the case of Isaak Il’ich Rubin, a prominent Russian economist and historian of economic thought, who in the late 1920s was denounced by rival scholars and repressed by the political system. By focusing not only on his life and work, but also on that of his opponents and institutional clashes, we show how the decline of a social science tradition in Russia and the USSR as well as the Stalinization of Soviet social sciences emerged as a process over time. We analyze the complex interplay of ideas, scholars, and their institutional context, and conclude that subsequent repression was arbitrary, suggesting that no clear survival or career strategy existed in the Stalinist system, due to a situation of fundamental uncertainty.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinhard Golz ◽  
Olga Graumann ◽  
David Whybra

The humanities and social sciences, and in particular the educational sciences, are facing major challenges in view of the current socio-political, economic and foreign policy upheavals. The authors characterize some of these challenges to education theorists and practical pedagogues against the background of the ideas of a “Humanization of Education” that emerged in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and led to the founding of the “International Academy for the Humanization of Education” (IAHE) in 1995. That humanization approach is still very relevant today. Here, the focus is on the current discussions of national identity, individuality and social responsibility, problems and tasks of inclusion and integration, as well as on the effects of digitalization on personality development. The influence of “Progressive Education” in the first half of the 20th century on the discussions centering on the “Humanization of Education” is taken into account, and the authors pose the question of the sustainability of such innovations in times of social upheavals.


Author(s):  
Mikhail Mints ◽  

This review article deals with a collection of essays published in «Europe-Asia Studies», vol. 71, N 6 (2019), the authors of which are analyzing Stalinism as a specific exemplar of state-building. Their research is based on various concepts of modern social sciences, especially on the theory of the developmental state. The authors show the new opportunities provided by such an approach and suggest the main directions of further study of the political history of the USSR from this point of view.


1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-185
Author(s):  
Mufti M.Y.M. Yusuf

The Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan organizedan international conference in Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, inconnection with the observances of the twelfth centenary of the birth of ImamAbu 'Isa Muhammad Ibn 'Isa al Tirmidhi, a native son. The conference wasattended by scholars from the Soviet Union and nearly 100 delegates fromoverseas.The keynote address, which was also the conference's theme, was deliveredThe American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 8, No. 1 1991 185by the Board's Chairman Mufti Muhanunad Sadyq Muhammad Yusuf. Hepresented a detailed account of the Imam's work, e pecially the well-knownbook Al Jami' al Sahih, and its impact on the contemporary world.The scholars stressed the need for greater attention to research and studyof the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (SAAS). They also adopted a numberof recommendations, including a call for greater attention to research on thehadith in order to facilitate its effective application in the everyday lives ofMuslims. This, it was observed, would contribute toward the assertion anddevelopoment of Islamic values throughout the ummah ...


Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch

This chapter details how with the end of the Second World War, social science disciplines were pulled in two diametrically opposed directions. The general intellectual climate of the post-World War II/early Cold War era was one of great optimism about professionalizing and modernizing the social sciences on the model of the natural sciences. This impulse especially affected political science. However, the inherent tensions between “rigor” and “relevance” reasserted themselves once again, and it became clear that a peacetime choice between them might have to be made. On the one hand, the experience of the war, and the growing realization that the country faced a protracted period of rivalry with the Soviet Union, encouraged the disciplines to try to remain relevant to policy. On the other hand, the mixed security environment and desire to remake the social sciences in the image of the natural sciences eventually pushed them away from it.


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