Sergey Aleksandrovich Krasilnikov,
Doctor of Historical Science, Professor, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
From the General History of Culture to the Social History of Science: V.L. Soskin − Researcher, Organizer, Mentor
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-1-20
In the subject field of Russian historical and cultural research in the second half of the twentieth century, two approaches to the consideration of the phenomenon of culture have developed. The first of them (internalist) focused on the study of internal trends for each of its industries. The second focused on the study of the influence of external, externalist factors of a political and ideological nature on cultural dynamics. The search for a balance between them determined the trajectory of the professional activity of one of the country’s leading researchers in this field, Varlen Lvovich Soskin. His transition from the general problems of the history of Soviet culture and intelligentsia to the development of an approach and tools for such a subdiscipline as social history took place most actively in the 1980s and was carried out primarily in the field of research on the history of science. The publication analyzes the conditions and factors that shaped V.L. Soskin as the leader of this scientific field in Siberia, who created a dynamically developing team of students who worked since the second half of the 1980s in an interdisciplinary field with the participation of social philosophers, sociologists, and scientists. Along with exploratory research in this area, he initiated a number of applied (chronicle and biographical) projects related to the history of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences. The accumulated experience allowed him to return to a new monographic level of understanding the social history of Russian culture of the first post-revolutionary decade. Conceptually, he designated the subject of its study as the definition of the place and role of cultural processes in public life in interaction with government institutions.
Publishing: 24/02/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 08/11/2024
How to cite: Krasilnikov S.A. From the General History of Culture to the Social History of Science: V.L. Soskin − Researcher, Organizer, Mentor // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 1 (39), pp. 302−323. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-1-20.pdf]
The message was made within the framework of the topic of the state assignment of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation “Socio-Economic Potential of the Eastern Regions of Russia in the 20th – Early 21st Centuries: Management Strategies and Practices, Dynamics, Geopolitical Context” (FWZM-2024-0005).
Links: Issue 1 2025
Keywords: culture; intelligentsia; general theory and history; early Soviet era; V.L. Soskin; social history of science; social institute of Science