Sociology and Power: Analyzing the Destiny of Nikolay Andreev, Who Bridges Pre-Revolutionary and Soviet Traditions.

The Russian experience of the1917 Revolutions and radical reshaping of the political landscape sharply influenced the trajectory of sociology as a discipline and biographies of Russian sociologists. Some like P. Sorokin went abroad, some like N. Kondratiev died in prison, but others made their carrier in soviet academic milieu. This paper presents an analysis of early soviet sociology opposed to conventional wisdom about the first Soviet decades. A recent surprising archival discovery provides new material for deepening and reconstructing the knowledge on initial stage of sociological tradition in the USSR Investigating the biography of Nikolay Andreev demonstrates that employing Marxist thought seriously and systematically in Soviet sociology was hard and risky road. Educated at Heidelberg University during the early 1900s he was among the founders of Russian sociological society in 1916. Although he was an active member of Russian Social-Democratic Party in combat against Tsarist power, after 1917 he broke with political life and focused on academic carrier that was not free from political pressure. During 1920-1940 Nikolay Andreev had given sociological lectures in various Universities of Leningrad. His publications were devoted mainly to the topics of sociological theory (particularly crossroads of history and sociology), problems of culture, religion and rural society in Russia. He suggested the original justification of the method of historical materialism and introduced on its basis the main problems of sociology. My paper will offer an account in rethinking the development of sociology in Soviet society.