Abstract
The recently published bookSoviet and Western Perspectives in Social Psychology (Strickland, 1979) reports a conference between Russian and Western (largely Canadian) social psychologists held in Canada. On the first page, the editor guides the reader to what should be the conclusion, as he talks about the ‘success’ of the conference: ‘it is ... remarkable that such a brief meeting should have been as fruitful and spontaneous as it turned out to be’ (Strickland, 1979, p. 1). The evidence in the book for such ‘success’ takes the form of the papers from Eastern and Western participants, together with transcripts from the discussion which followed the formal papers. As such, the book provides the opportunity for a rarely undertaken analysis and comparison of the theoretical bases of Western and Soviet social psychology; in fact, it is only in the light of such an analysis that the perceived ‘success’ of this type of venture can be understood, let alone evaluated.
Social psychology has developed later in the Soviet Union than in the United States (see, tor example, the histories of Soviet psychology by Rahmani, 1973, and McLeish, 1975). One of the Russian participants, Galina Andreeva, points to the late 1950s as the time when social psychology began to emerge as a separate discipline, whilst Kerbikov (1969), himself a Soviet social psychologist, has suggested that it was the Second Congress of Psychologists held in 1963 which allayed previous Soviet hostility to social psychological research; he comments that ‘the necessity for doing such research now arouses no suspicion whatsoever’ (p. 392). So just as Western and Eastern physicists, biochemists, geologists, etc. meet in congresses in an atmosphere of scientific cooperation, it seems inevitable that representatives of the somewhat younger science of social psychology should become involved in similar international meetings, designed to facilitate the flow of scientific information across national and ideological boundaries. However, it will be suggested that the nature of social psychology in the West and in the Soviet Union raises particular problems for such meetings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andreski, S. (1974). Social Sciences as Sorcery. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Belen’kii, V. Kh. & Rakhimov, A. R. (1978). Current problems in the studv of social democracy. Soviet Sociology, 17, 83–101.
Billig, M. (1975). Review of ‘The Resolution of Conflict’ by Morton Deutsch. European Journal of Social Psychology, 5, 409–414.
Billig, M. (1976). Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press.
BroŽek, J. (1966). Contemporary Soviet psychology. In N. O’Connor (ed.), Present-Day Russian Psychology. Oxford: Pergamon.
Buss, A. R. (1975). The emerging field of the sociology of psychological knowledge. American Psychologist, 30, 988–1002.
Deutsch, M. (1973). The Resolution of Conflict. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Deutsch, M. (1974). The social-psychological study of conflict: rejoinder to a critique. European Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 441–456.
Deutsch, M. (1975). A reply to Billig. European Journal of Social Psychology, 5, 415–418.
Doise, W. (1978). Images, représentations, idéologies et expérimentation psychosociologique. Social Science Information, 17, 41–70.
Gasman, D. (1971). The Scientific Origin of National Socialism. London: MacDonald.
Grigoryan, N. A. (1980). The history of materialist psychophysiology. Soviet Review, 21(2), 84–98.
Haeckel, E. (1901). The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century. London: Watts.
Joravsky, D. (1977). The mechanical spirit: the Stalinist marriage of Pavlov to Marx. Theory and Society, 4, 457–477.
Kelle, V. (1980). Problems of historical materialism in ‘Materialism and Empirio- Criticism’. Social Sciences, 11, 43–59.
Kerbikov, O. V. (1969). Microsociology, concrete sociological studies and psychiatry. In M. Cole and I. Maltzman (eds.), A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology. New York: Basic Books.
Kofman, S. (1973). Camera Obscura: de l’idéologie. Paris: Editions Galilée.
Krauss, R. M. (1976). Social psychology in the Soviet Union: some comments. In S. A. Corson & E. O’L. Corson (eds.), Psychiatry and Psychology in the USSR. New York: Plenum Press.
Lader, M. (1977). Psychiatry on Trial. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lenin, V. I. (1960). What the ‘Friends of the People’ are and how they fight the Social-Democrats. In Collected Works, Volume 1. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Lenin, V. I. (1972). Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Peking: Foreign Languages Press.
Lewicki, P. (1979). Some remarks on the case of the crisis in American social psychology. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 10, 243–252.
Lomov, B. F. (1969). Engineering psychology in the USSR. In M. Cole and I. Maltzman (eds.), A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology. New York: Basic Books.
Lomov, B. F. (1972). Present status and future development of psychology in the USSR in the light of decisions of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Soviet Psychology, 10, 329–358.
Lomov, B. F. (1979). Sixty years of Soviet psychology. Soviet Review, 20(2), 46–60.
Lubek, I. (1976). Some tentative suggestions for analyzing and neutralizing the power structure in social psychology. In L. Strickland et al. (eds.), Social Psychology in Transition. New York: Plenum Press.
Lukacs, G. (1980). The Destruction of Reason. London: Merlin.
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1970). The German Ideology: Part One. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
McLeish, J. (1975). Soviet Psychology: History, Theory and Content. London: Methuen.
Moscovici, S. (1976). Social Influence and Social Change. London: Academic Press.
Petrovskij, A. V. (1971). Some problems of research in social psychology. Soviet Psychology, 10, 382–398.
Plon, M. (1974). On the meaning of the notion of conflict and its study in social psychology. European Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 389–436.
Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan Myth. London: Chatto Heinemann.
Rahmani, L. (1973). Soviet Psychology: Philosophical, Theoretical and Experimental Issues. New York: International Universities Press.
Ruben, D. H. (1977). Marxism and Materialism: a Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge. Hassocks: Harvester.
Steiner, I. D. (1974). Whatever happened to the group in social psychology? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 94–108.
Strickland, L. H. (ed.) (1979). Soviet and Western Perspectives in Social Psychology. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Sherif, M. (1965). Group Conflict and Co-operation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Tajfel, H. (1972). Experiments in a vacuum. In J. Israel & H. Tajfel(eds.), The Context of Social Psychology. London: Academic Press.
Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation Between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press.
Twenty-Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Tasks of Soviet Psychology (1972). Soviet Psychology, 10, 323–328.
Voronkov, L. (1976). Institute of Scientific Information for the Social Sciences. Social Sciences, 7, 226–228.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Billig, M. Ideology within Soviet and western social psychology. Current Psychological Reviews 1, 193–204 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02979264
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02979264