State and Society in Soviet Thought

The Soviet Union has witnessed the first occasion in history in which a sociological theory, namely Marxism, has become the official ideology of a major power and a large and complex society. But as social theory and social research continue to be practised within the Soviet Union a complex relationship inevitably develops between the use of Marxist ideas as official ideology and as part of historical, anthropological and sociological sociological research. These studies explore this tangled relationship in connection with a number of special topics, such as an account of the so called "Asiatic mode of production", the problem of whether Marxism can accommodate more than one line of historical materialism and the manner in which historical materialism can function as a satisfactory scheme of sociological explanation. The work throws considerable light on the problems currently facing Soviet society.