Sociology in Subaltern Conditions: A Story About Russian Sociology

In this chapter, I attempt to unfold the story of Russian sociology as a social science of the Empire Subaltern. The lenses of neocolonial and anti-authoritarian approaches enable the revealing of an embedded subaltern position of sociology of the Soviet period, its troubled professional normalisation as peripheral science in the 1990s–2010s, and the current impact of the war in Ukraine on the national sociological community. This approach also aids in developing a refreshing view of the opportunities and enactments of sociological roles in different (authoritarian and liberal) knowledge-production regimes. This chapter presents Russian sociology’s path from an embedded subaltern position to professional normalisation and the current impact of the war in Ukraine on the national sociological community. The vision of the subject is being formed by the author’s long-term involvement in the Russian academic community and global sociology activities, participation in the long-awaited final institutionalisation of the discipline in the late 1980s, and engagement with both state and non-state sociological institutions of the post-Soviet era. From this positionality, I would like to unfold my vision of the trends in our profession in the changing Russian context. The first part of the chapter presents a theoretical framework regarding subaltern sociology; in the following sections, the argument is unfolded in different temporal-political contexts of sociological knowledge production, and the final part focuses on the ongoing processes of shrinking academic freedoms.