A New Start: Years of Transition After 1945, Sovietization and Its Aftermath

Abstract

The collapse of the old regime brought new hopes and opportunities for the reconstruction of institutionalized sociology. In this chapter the years after 1945 are discussed: a transition with limited political pluralism, purges of old-regime staffs and the return of many intellectual émigrés from Russia and the West. Most institutions continued to function more or less as before, but academia was marked by expansion and the integration of new staffs. 1948, the ‘year of the turn’ led to one-party rule directed from Moscow. The following years witnessed reforms of higher education with social quotas for student admissions and drastic political purges of academic staffs. The core social sciences were banned, their institutions closed and replaced by the mandatory teaching of Marxism-Leninism at all levels of the nationalized education system. The Academy of Science received a new entitlement for the certification of scholars.