Post-Soviet societies and social theory

Ch. 27. P. 151–156.

Bankovskaya S., Filippov A. F.

Editor of translation: V. Raf, V. Gert

In this entry, the origins of post-Soviet societies are traced back to the USSR before its collapse. It is argued that post-Soviet societies should be studied not only with reference to the history of the last decades of the USSR, but also with reference to the self-description of Soviet society in Soviet social sciences. The history of Soviet sociology is outlined, emphasizing its efforts to find its place between Soviet dogmatic Marxism and contemporary patterns of social scientific knowledge production. The legacy of this history is the permanent lack of social-theoretical communication in the post-Soviet space. Further analysis of post-Soviet societies continues to focus on the relationship of ‘empire vs. world society’, which determines a number of theoretical issues arising from the mobility of boundaries, the incongruity of political and cultural-ethnic borders, the marginalization of post-Soviet social institutions, and postcolonial discourse.

Keywords: империя, пост-советское пространство, world society, Post-Soviet spaces, Empire, Soviet/Post-Soviet Social Theory, мировое общество, советская/пост-советская социальная теория

In book

Elgar Encyclopedia of Global Social Theory

Bankovskaya S., Alexander F. F., Filippov A. F. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025.