Ideology that Mattered: The Debates on Historical Materialism and Sociology in the USSR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, 1948–1968

Abstract

The article contests the thesis that in the Soviet Bloc ideology was merely an external obstacle to sociology’s development, and argues against the widespread conviction that Stalinism condemned sociology as a “bourgeois pseudo-science”. In fact, the Stalinist philosophy did assume the existence of a Marxist sociology, and later on, it is argued, ideological disputes played an important part in sociology’s self-constitution. That was especially the case with the post-Stalinist discussions on relationship between historical materialism and sociology, which concerned the very outlook of Marxist sociology. The debates on this issue in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the USSR are reviewed, and linked to the institutional development and some other characteristics of sociology in these countries