Burawoy and the Craft of Global Public Sociology: Dialogues with Russia

Michael Burawoy, a renowned social theorist and proponent of public sociology, passed away at the age of 77. Throughout his life, he dedicated himself to sociology – revealing hidden societal boundaries, addressing various forms of inequality, and fostering connections across communities, including within the discipline itself.

Michael was, and will remain, a multifaceted luminary in sociology – a friend, mentor, and colleague to us. His scholarly contributions and legacy will endure, particularly for those examining the trajectory of neoliberal capitalism and the vulnerability of civil society to market and state pressures. In this brief tribute, we reflect on a singular aspect of his remarkable career: his connections to Russia and our collaborative endeavors to comprehend the dynamics of capitalism, the lived experiences of the Russian people, and the potential of public sociology to effect social change.

The inception of the labor movement under state socialism

In 1986, at the onset of perestroika, Michael, accompanied by Erik Olin Wright, traveled to Moscow to engage with Soviet sociologists from the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences in a comparative study of class consciousness in the USSR and the United States.

During ten days of “frustrating but revealing” discussions, significant ideological and interpretive divisions became apparent – particularly concerning Marxist categories and the hesitance of Soviet scholars to openly analyze the contradictions inherent in real socialism.

Subsequently, each scholar pursued distinct paths. Wright did not return to Russia. In contrast, Burawoy endeavored to initiate a comprehensive ethnographic study of Soviet industry, akin to his research in Hungary. He perceived Soviet socialism not as a tragic deviation from the socialist ideal but as one of its manifestations – state socialism – meriting critical and empirical examination. He posed inquiries regarding labor organization, worker consciousness, and the paradox that labor movements emerged more robustly in state socialist regimes than in advanced capitalist societies.

The transition to market capitalism

In 1991, Burawoy began participant observation at a furniture factory in Komi, examining a hypothesis initially posited in his book Manufacturing Consent (1979) and later elaborated in The Radiant Past (1992, with Janos Lukács). He differentiated between control over the labor process (relations of production) and control within the labor process (relations in production). Under Soviet conditions, workers exercised the latter due to systemic shortages, as managers relinquished operational control to ensure continuity of production. This paradoxical autonomy exemplified both the flexibility and resilience of the administrative-command system.

Initially aiming to compare Soviet and Hungarian labor under late socialism, the field results revealed a disintegrating command economy that was increasingly supplanted by barter-based exchange, resulting in disorder rather than self-organization. The factory became a space of anarchic fragmentation, fostering the rise of commercial capitalism and a nascent oligarchic class.

From 1992 to 1994, the research extended to Vorkuta’s coal basin, where mine strikes and reforms were in conflict. A sociological analysis of all twelve mines, conducted in collaboration with a World Bank project, highlighted the harmful effects of shock therapy. Workers, disillusioned by market liberalization, gradually abandoned collective resistance – “bowing before the angel of history.”

Market pressures, gendered shifts, and economic involution

As industrial enterprises collapsed, wage delays became widespread, and compensation was sometimes provided in the form of overpriced food. Economic activity shifted to the domestic sphere.

Starting in 1994, Burawoy and Lytkina investigated workers’ survival strategies through household interviews, developing a theory of post-socialist transition, inspired by Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Burawoy echoed Polanyi’s view: markets cannot generate society without either destruction or resistance.

In post-Soviet Russia, this resistance emerged as increased domestic labor, a revival of informal economies, and the commodification of labor, money, nature, and care – each embedded in culturally significant social relations. Interviews revealed a stark gender divide. On the one hand, women became de facto heads of households, compensating for men’s loss of status and employment. On the other hand, women’s kinship-based support networks often substituted for the failing state. The entrepreneurial spirit of working-class women, both within and outside the household, including those involved in small businesses in trade or service, prevented them and their families from escaping the cycle of deprivation.

Together with Burawoy, Krotov and Lytkina termed this “involution” – a regressive adaptation that preserved survival at the cost of social reconstruction.

Neoliberal state pressure and the logic of exclusion

The Involution Project was hosted at the Institute for Socioeconomic and Energy Problems of the North (ISEEP) at the Komi Science Center. Burawoy’s fieldwork and openness to collaborative dialogue transformed empirical challenges into conceptual inquiries.

A new initiative emerged: analyzing Russia’s selective social welfare system post-1996. Together, we examined how rural and urban residents gained or lost “officially poor” status, and how poverty itself was shaped by policy.

Despite his Marxist roots, Burawoy embraced theoretical pluralism and agreed with the prospect of applying William Julius Wilson’s theories of urban poverty to the Russian context, demonstrating how empirical grounding can rejuvenate theoretical categories.

As labor rights eroded and lawful strikes became nearly impossible, the state abandoned labor market regulation. Simultaneously, poverty definitions narrowed. Moreover, as the number and composition of people experiencing poverty increased, the state changed the rules for registering “those in need of support”. It disciplined people with low incomes, widening the circles of those excluded from the right to social protection. Bureaucratic distancing – by the state, policy experts, and unions – left society isolated in a “primitive struggle for survival,” where denial of poverty became a survival strategy, and class identity dissolved.

The commodification of knowledge and public sociology’s resistance

Later, Burawoy turned his focus to the university, where knowledge and academic labor were increasingly commodified under neoliberal regimes.

In 2007, at the invitation of Svetlana Yaroshenko, he delivered lectures in St. Petersburg on the topic of public sociology. He returned in 2015 to present “Sociology as a Vocation” and participate in a roundtable on the future of Russian sociology.

Burawoy emphasized sociology’s mission to unify rather than divide, functioning as both a scientific and moral-political discipline. He championed the return of enriched sociological knowledge to marginalized publics. Though aware of the structural constraints facing Russian public sociology, his optimism and experience overcoming barriers informed his belief that professional and public sociology could coexist and thrive.

In 2015, amid rising academic pressures, he urged sociologists to resist the uncritical pursuit of academic performance metrics, historicize their own struggles, recognize the personal as social, and develop empirically grounded, locally relevant theories – whether borrowed or shaped by the Russian context.

He advocated for solidarity among sociologists and active engagement with a self-organizing civil society, emphasizing the transformative power of collective inquiry and its public relevance.

Michael as a living embodiment

Michael Burawoy brilliantly integrated his passion for sociology with an acute awareness of the inequalities spawned by global capitalism. His cross-national research – including in Russia – demonstrated that sociologists are a potentially “dangerous” intellectual class: aligned with civil society, alert to mechanisms of inequality, and capable of transforming individual suffering into collective action.

Above all, we remember his attentiveness, openness, generosity, and wisdom. He listened with genuine respect, bridging divides, dismantling hierarchies, and fostering equality in daily interactions. His insights into structure and agency were forged through deep, empathetic engagement with workers’ lives.

To us, Michael Burawoy was not only a theorist of public sociology – he was its living embodiment.

Pavel Krotov, Pitirim A. Sorokin Foundation, Boston, USA <pasha.boston1307@gmail.com>
Tatyana Lytkina, Komi Science Center, Russia <tlytkina@yandex.ru>
Svetlana Yaroshenko, St. Petersburg Association of Sociologists, Russia <svetayaroshenko@gmail.com>