Soviet Industrial Sociology and Enterprise Social Planning under Brezhnev

Abstract

This thesis, based on archival and other documentary sources and oral history interviews, charts the history of late-Soviet industrial sociology from 1956, with a particular focus on the Brezhnev era. It examines the sociologists’ response to the official directives to Soviet science to assume a greater role in the industrial economy and the impact of those developments on sociology as an academic, research, and occupational field. This thesis contributes to the historiographies of Soviet sociology and late-Soviet industry, which have so far failed to examine systematically the expansion of the sociological research carried out in Soviet factories and the harnessing of the social sciences in the management of the Soviet industrial workforce.

Industrial sociology developed especially rapidly after the economic reforms announced by Aleksei Kosygin in 1965, one consequence of which was the creation of social development plans, underpinned by scientific sociological research, for individual industrial enterprises. A few specific localities outside Moscow were at the vanguard of these initiatives, including Leningrad and Perm, which offer telling, yet distinct, case-studies. In the 1970s, social development planning was expanded into the management of urban areas, though the sociologists played a less prominent role in this field.

Late-Soviet industrial sociology was formed of three loosely interconnected groups, each with different priorities. One group of academics focused on the development of sociology more broadly into a fully-recognised Soviet science. Another was centred in the sociological research institutes and their work in partnership with individual industrial enterprises. The third and most numerous group comprised the sociologists employed directly by the enterprises. This thesis reveals the absence of a top-down plan for the development of the late-Soviet industrial sociology and argues that the ability of certain individuals to negotiate the constraints and opportunities afforded by the Soviet system proved critical to the expansion of this field.