Dual sided population management in Russia and how the war boosts social inequalities. From regional and ethnic breaks to antiwar migration and psychotropic drugs.
The neo-mercantilist character of the current Russian regime fits problematically the neo-liberal rationality. The capitalism is still there, although back to its more archaic form.
An overly simplifying geopolitical reading (NATO vs Russia) blocks the view of the relational structures in Russia causing the war.
Three major forms of anti-war resistance in Russia, a concise list of tactics, from silently taken medical certificates to Molotov cocktails against enlistment offices.
European sensibility, individual assistance and the need for associative structures to process the trauma of the perpetrator society.
The discussion was held at the Festival of social sciences Allez Savoir 2022 (September 24th, Marseille), in French. Subtitles in English and in other languages could be switched on in the video.
Participants
Alexander Bikbov, sociologist, associate fellow at CERCEC (EHESS/CNRS)
Alexandra Koulaeva, historian, independent researcher
Isabelle Thireau, sociologist, research director at CCJ (CNRS)
The management of collective time, the base of socialist planning, follows a historical transformation going from a meticulous regulation of workers’ gestures in the 1920s to leisure activities organized in the 1960s according to scientific studies. Exported to the Eastern bloc, from Poland to China, the Soviet model provokes a keen interest among French and European state managers, while the ‘bourgeois’ models of forecasting are adapted in the USSR. In this way, the state interest to control time goes beyond the well-drawn border between the political regimes of the East and the West. The discussion introduces into transformations of the governmental relationship to productive and spare time which mark different periods of the communist project, having a constant echo and striking similarities in France and internationally. A closer look at the original adaptation of Taylorism in the USSR and at controversial biographies of its bearers, as well as at the stateization of leisure time, offer a new view of historical discrepancies between socialism and capitalism.
«La gestion communiste du temps, modèle en devenir», table ronde au Festival des sciences sociales Allez Savoir 2022, Marseille
La conscienza cresce in Russia che la guerra contro l’Ucraina è una disgrazia. La società è in gran parte schiacciata dalle disuguaglianze ma i focolai di dissidenza e resistenza, sottotraccia, non si spengono. Un’analisi delle dinamiche della società russa dal febbraio 2022: la guerra come la macchina delle disuguaglianze, le forme di consenso e di resistenza che genera.
La società ucraina esiste
La crisi di coscienza dei russi
La guerra ha portato distruzione anche in Russia
Il lavoro degli esuli e di chi è rimasto
Una società controllata e censurata ma non schiacciata
Un regime neomercantilista: la guerra è potere per la nazione
Après la mort de Staline, en 1953, la réouverture de l’Union soviétique à l’international permet la naissance et l’institutionnalisation progressive d’une sociologie qui intègre des apports des sciences sociales américaines, sous la surveillance du marxisme orthodoxe. Cet article décrit le développement et les crises de cette sociologie jusqu’au début des années 1970. L’auteur propose ensuite une ouverture synthétique sur les périodes ultérieures, jusqu’à celle de la Russie de Poutine. L’analyse s’attache particulièrement à l’ambiguïté qui caractérise les relations de la sociologie soviétique avec les autorités politiques. Et montre l’hybridation entre deux raisons d’État contradictoires et portées par des fractions opposées de l’appareil du Parti communiste : l’une, héritée de l’ordre politique stalinien, consiste en une pédagogie hégémoniste des masses reposant sur une doctrine des classes sociales opposant les sociétés socialistes et bourgeoises ; l’autre a un rapport direct avec les fonctions expertes de la gestion des populations. Sous tous ces rapports, la sociologie soviétique et russe donne à voir, de façon particulièrement visible, un trait général et structurant de la discipline : la cohabitation, souvent tendue, d’un pôle critique, aux prises avec l’autorité politique, et d’un pôle plus professionnalisé, tourné vers des usages « utiles » des méthodes et des connaissances sociologiques.
English “A governmental vagary”: Soviet sociology between enticement and repression
Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union’s rekindling of international relations fostered the genesis and gradual institutionalization of a sociological discipline reflective of inputs from the US social sciences while being constrained by orthodox Marxism. This article traces the expansion and crises of this discipline until the 1970s. It then briefly sketches subsequent developments, up to Putin’s regime. It underscores that the ambiguous relationship between Soviet sociology and political authorities reflected the hybridization of two contradictory “raisons d’État” (reasons of state) fostered by competing fractions of the communist party. The first, inherited from the Stalinist political order, propounded a hegemonic pedagogy of the masses, leaning on a doctrine of the social classes opposing socialist and bourgeois societies. By contrast, the second fostered sociology’s function as a population management expertise. These tensions within Soviet and Russian sociology constitute a petri-dish of a wider structuring feature of the discipline: the often-strained cohabitation between a critical pole grappling with political authorities, and a more professionally oriented pole engaged in “useful” usages of sociological methods and knowledge.
о том, как с 1950-х культура включается в государственное администрирование, ведомое интересом правительности (gouvernementalité) по разные стороны «железного занавеса», как новые культурные институции с их эмансипаторной этикой перерастают утилитарную модель управляемого прогресса, что председатель французского Госплана мог обсуждать с Клодом Леви-Стросом, какая связь между позднесоветскими творческими кочегарками и «паразитарной» теорией интеллектуального труда Фрейдсона, как государственная политика культуры с 1990-х стирает различие между профессиональным этосом науки и искусства (и почему научные институции все же более инерционны), какова роль длительности в антропологии культурного производства, по каким причинам институциональные модели второй половины XX века по-прежнему остаются моделью будущего, и какие опасные тенденции станут частью политики культуры после 2024, если не уделить им внимания сегодня, в инициативах профессиональной самоорганизации.
