As in many advanced European countries, the development of sociology as a science in Russia began in the middle of the 19th century. This discipline is a branch that studies the laws of the functioning of society and its structure. At the same time, its development in our country was largely determined by historical upheavals and the political situation at a particular moment in time.
Pre-revolutionary period
The first Russian sociologists were largely inspired by the developments of Western scientists. First of all, Auguste Comte, Georg Simmel and Emile Durkheim. At the same time, in domestic conditions, this science has acquired a completely special character. On local soil, her main problem was the national idea.
It was then that Russian sociologists created many fateful for the country (and partially popular even today) concepts: Slavophilism, Westernism, and so on. The emergence at that time of two camps supporting these ideas determined sociological thought in the country in the middle of the 19th century. The Slavophiles were convinced that the historical conditions of Russia formed a completely unique social organism here, from which the need for furtherindependent development and rejection of the ideas of the European path, and even more so of integration. Russian sociologists of Western sentiments considered Russia as a component of a common European civilization and advocated the sharing of relevant values, as well as the speedy integration into the European family.
Toward the end of the 19th century, as well as at the beginning of the 20th century, subjectivism became the leading trend in Russian scientific thought. In Russian realities, this doctrine assumed the ability of an individual to significantly influence the historical course of events at his own will, regardless of the objective laws of social and historical developments. The most famous Russian sociologists of the pre-revolutionary period: N. Danilevsky, N. Chernyshevsky, L. Mechnikov, P. Lavrov and a number of others.
Sociological science in the Soviet state
In the first post-revolutionary decade, there was still quite a lot of freedom for the development of sociological ideas. The party was busy with internal contradictions and a struggle of views on what course the state should develop. The science of society in this period was fully recognized and even supported, which was used by Russian sociologists.
Thus, departments were even created at the Petrograd and Yaroslavl universities. In 1919, a sociological institute was founded in the country, and relevant literature was published. However, the further, the more free-thinking was crushed, being replaced by a Marxist approach to the study of society.
In the 1930ssociology completely falls into disgrace with the government, becoming for it a pseudoscience. A new timid attempt at revival was made by Russian sociologists of the 20th century in its second half, when in the 1960s its interrupted development continued in the system of related sciences - philosophy and economics. The science of social development received a certain recognition only in the 1970s and 1980s, and with perestroika it became completely free. However, the financial collapse of the state led sociology, like many other sciences, to a dead end for many years.
