Central and Eastern European Sociology

There is no doubt that central and eastern European sociologies have similar intellectual, historical, and political roots and can be treated as one block, in contrast to western European sociologies, which are not characterized by uniformity (Nedelmann and Sztompka 1993). This holds true especially for the postwar period in the development of eastern European sociologies. The only exception to this pattern is Polish sociology, which is why we analyze the history and current state of Polish sociology separately. In this brief analysis of central and eastern European sociology we focus on Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Bulgarian, and Rumanian sociologies (see Kolaja and Das 1988; Genov 1989; Keen and Mucha 1994).

Overall, we do not evaluate these sociologies as very impressive, especially in comparison to western European sociologies, on the one hand, and American sociology, on the other. Central and eastern...