SOVIETINĖ MODERNIZACIJA SOCIALINĖS SISTEMOS IR SOCIALINIO VEIKĖJO SĄVEIKA
THE SOVIET MODERNIZATION: INTERFACE OF SOCIAL SYSTEM AND SOCIAL AGENT?

Summary/Abstract: Assuming that there is, with respect to systems of political and socioeconomic relations, a radical difference between systems peculiar to state socialist societies and those peculiar to capitalist societies, Soviet society, from the standpoint of its technological and institutional organization, exemplified a specific variation of the modern, industrial, urbanized, bureaucratized society, embracing all levels of education. In this sense we can talk of the modernization of society during the Soviet period, the development of the essential features of primary modernity, according to Ulrich Beck. In our view, Soviet modernity would be a conceptually feasible term not only chronologically speaking but also in virtue of its connoting a peculiar social structure, peculiar social relations, and peculiar social actors. The content Soviet would first of all relate to the consequences of the strong systematic repression associated with state socialism. The strengthening of supervision and social control is a characteristic feature of a modern social system which the totalitarian regime of state socialism developed to an utmost degree. This determined a universal institutionalization and the specific social practices of behavioral adaptation exhibited by society and individual social groups. Repressed social protests provoked by modernization manifested themselves in other social forms: deviant social practices and the discourse tolerating them.

• Details
• Contents