Technology, Work, and Sociology in the USSR: The NOT Movement

The study of work has been a natural field of interest for the burgeoning field of sociology in the USSR, given the Marxist ideological orientation of the regime. Owing to the intrinsic rather than extrinsic values attached to work in the Soviet Union, sociological research in this area has focused on the meaning and significance of work under conditions of occupational change in industries associated with rapid technological advance. Although Soviet sociology has not been entirely ignored by Western social scientists, by and large their treatments of the subject have failed to supply the social context in which Soviet sociology emerged.1 The present study seeks to establish the historical context in which Soviet industrial sociology developed, while leaving aside the question of its methodological orientations.