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Советская социология как полицейская наука
In "Soviet sociology as police science," Alexander F. Filippov attempts to examine Soviet sociology of the 1960s and early 1970s in terms of so-called "police science," a system of administrative disciplines that had their heyday in Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century. Unlike Western sociology, which developed as one of the alternatives to police science, sociology in the USSR could not be oriented toward solving fundamental theoretical problems — these remained the focus of ideological work. The main task of Soviet sociology, then, was the search for the best methods for managing an ever-more-complicated society with the ostensible aim of "the common good" (decisions about which were taken by an administration in which citizens had no part). Police surveillance and administrative knowledge (also in essence oriented toward policing) were supposed to complement each other in this state of universal well-being for all.