On Being Human in an Inhuman World: Remembering Vladimir Yadov
In the 1960s, the Laboratory of Concrete Social Research in Leningrad was a hotbed of newfangled sociological science, fighting to secure a niche in the ideologically implacable discipline known as “historical materialism.” Would-be sociologists sold empirical research to Soviet authorities on the premise that sociology’s tools could investigate progress toward communism, enabling observers to spot and publicize trends consistent with the...