Negotiating the Boundaries of the Speakable: The Introduction of Western Social and Human Sciences into the USSR by Progress Publishers (1963-1985)
This paper examines the circulation of ideas and knowledge between Western countries and the Soviet Union through the translation of books in the social and human sciences. The analysis focuses on the activity of Progress Publishers (1963-1996), a Soviet publishing house with a privileged status and...
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| 發表在: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/bssg, |
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| Auteurs principaux: | , |
| 格式: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| 語言: | Anglais |
| 出版: |
Biens Symboliques / Symbolic Goods
2026
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| 主題: | |
| 在線閱讀: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| 總結: | This paper examines the circulation of ideas and knowledge between Western countries and the Soviet Union through the translation of books in the social and human sciences. The analysis focuses on the activity of Progress Publishers (1963-1996), a Soviet publishing house with a privileged status and a dual mission: to promote the classic works of Marxism-Leninism and the scholarly output of Soviet specialists abroad; and to publish translations of “bourgeois” Western thought and distribute them in the USSR. As a state-run publisher, subject to the control of censors and government bodies, Progress manoeuvred between ideological constraints, state demands, and scientific interests, and this was reflected in its position at the intersection of the political, academic, and publishing fields. This study highlights the key role played by Progress in the introduction of new ideas in the social and human sciences into the USSR between the 1960s and 1980s. By analysing its internal structure and the socio-occupational trajectories of publishing managers, and reconstructing the academic networks associated with the publisher and its catalogues, this article reveals the logics that determined which books were imported, and examines the constraints on the production of translations in an authoritarian context. |
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