The End of “Transitology”? (Reflecting on the First Post-Communist Decade as Subject of Theoretical Interpretation)

The End of “Transitology”? (Reflecting on the First Post-Communist Decade as Subject of Theoretical Interpretation)


Kapustin B.G.,

Dr. Sci. (Philos. Sci.), Professor, HSE University, Moscow, Russia, boriskapustin1951@gmail.com


elibrary_id: 337381 | ORCID: 0000-0003-4076-9466 | RESEARCHER_ID: M-4580-2016


For citation:

Kapustin B.G. The End of “Transitology”? (Reflecting on the First Post-Communist Decade as Subject of Theoretical Interpretation) . – Polis. Political Studies. 2001. No. 4



Abstract
The essay purports a critical analysis of “transitology” as a paradigm of post-soviet studies. The idea of “postcommunist transition”, in its multiple modifications, is in fact “the second edition” of the theories of modernization that flourished in the fifties-sixties but were largely abandoned later because of their intellectual inconsistency and political inadequacy. The adjustment of these theories to the study of postcommunism as it was determined both by the specific character of the subject matter and by certain ideological exigencies, resulted in intellectual impoverishment and moral insensitivity of “transitology” if compared with at least “revisionist” versions of the modernization theory that proliferated in the sixties - early seventies. The essay examines how these features of “transitology” shape (or thwart) the style of thinking manifested in the mainstream post-sovietology and in theories of democratization in particular. The essay concludes that a shift to alternative paradigms in post-sovietology is overdue, postmodernism being one of the most promising among them.

Content No. 4, 2001

See also:


Sorokin K.E.,
Russia and the Play of Geopolitical Interests in the Great Ocean Area. – Polis. Political Studies. 1994. No4

Kapustin B.G.,
Postcommunism as Postmodernity (Russian Variant). – Polis. Political Studies. 2001. No5

Barsukova S.Yu.,
Problems of Refugees and Emergency Migrants in the Mirror of Ideologies. – Polis. Political Studies. 1999. No5

Pastukhov V.B.,
From Statehood to the State: Europe and Russia. – Polis. Political Studies. 1994. No2

Laslo E. ,
Birth of a World - Birth of a Science - Birth of an Age. – Polis. Political Studies. 1993. No2

 

   

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Polis. Political Studies
1 2002


Shcherbak A.N.
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