The Catechism of the Social Sciences: Can It Be Reconciled with Renewal?

Criticism of the "social sciences" does not occupy last place among the multitude of new ideas raised by >i>perestroika.>/i> The reference is to school subjects in their special, departmental understanding known to everyone who has gone through the Soviet system of higher education. The "cartridge clip" of these subjects included History of the CPSU, Scientific Communism, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, and Marxist-Leninist Political Economy. For almost three-quarters of a century, an army of many thousand "social-science" teachers instilled the ideological credo of the apparatus that manages Soviet society in students in all specialtiesfrom engineers to cooks, from physicians to comedians, from merchandisers to archaeologists and astronomers in an enormous volume at all institutes, universities, technicums, and training schools. While this credo has changed in the course of Soviet history, the orientation of the "social sciences" toward brainwashing >i>[ideologicheskaia obrabotka soznaniia]>/i> youth has remained constant. The older generations remember well the continuous ideological campaigns to instill in the mass consciousness the decrees of party congresses, the decisions of plenums, and the speeches of party leaders.

An Example of Typological Analysis of Material Consumption (Based on the Siberian Countryside)

The purpose of our investigation is to determine the character of thedifferentiation of the population of the Siberian countryside according to various types of material consumption and to define the interrelationship of this differentiation and external socioeconomic factors that reflect the living conditions of the rural population of Western Siberia.