Vol 26, No 3 (2026): JOURNAL’S ANNIVERSARY

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The first issue of the RUDN Journal of Sociology in 2001 opened with this article by Gennady Semenovich Batygin. He taught at the RUDN University for over ten years, until his death in 2003, and is rightfully considered one of the most renowned and authoritative Russian sociologists of the 1980s - early 2000s. His professional interests were extremely broad: among other things, he considered the issues of methodology of sociological research, history of foreign and Russian sociology, history of the social thought in the USSR, sociology of knowledge and science; he was the founder and editor of the Russian Sociological Journal. This article, republished a quarter of a century later, is not only a tribute to the memory of this outstanding scholar and is of more than just memorial value. Over the past twenty-five years, the social and technological universe surrounding us has changed beyond recognition. The information-communications revolution associated with the Internet is apparently unprecedented in world history. This is not only due to the fundamental nature of unfolding changes, the consequences of which are difficult to fully assess today, but also to the speed and pace of these transformations. Today, we live in two worlds, or in one hybrid - offline-online, at least half “virtual” reality. Not long ago - at the turn of the 21st century - the gates to a new digital world were just beginning to open, and the prospects were rather vague and uncertain, as this world was just emerging. Back then, the advent of a new era of human development in its many specific details could hardly be accurately predicted or diagnosed. Batygin was one of the few Russian social scientists who took these changes seriously, as a subject worthy of study. Some of the judgments and conclusions in this article may seem naive, unjustified and have failed to stand the test of time. But should we accuse the author of lack of insight? Colleagues who knew Gennady Semenovich personally or who are simply familiar with his publications continue to share their impressions of him and his ideas. Everyone agrees that Batygin had an extremely keen sense of complexity, paradox and drama of social life. The realities of our collective experience at the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st century could hardly have been fully grasped from the “temporal observation point” of 2000. It is impossible to judge empirically correctly about something that does not yet exist - that would be like expecting Karl Marx to provide a detailed and precise analysis of the transformations of capitalist society in the 20th century. Nevertheless, Batygin’s sociological intuitions from twenty-five years ago are consistent with the data and research tools available at that time. Undoubtedly, this article is of interest to the history of the latest stage of sociology’s development in Russia - for those who witnessed and participated in it and for those who are just exploring sociology as a future professional field.

The article considers the achievements and ranking indicators of the RUDN Journal of Sociology. The author aims not only at identifying the journal’s current position in national and international scientific citation systems but also at describing the key editorial policy factors that have contributed to such a position. The article presents an analysis of the journal’s scientometric indicators in the Scopus, Web of Science, Russian Science Citation Index and of its status in the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) List and the White List. The author focuses on the journal’s internationalization strategy, open access policy, and adherence to the high publication ethics standards. Based on the analysis, the author argues that the current ranking positions of the RUDN Journal of Sociology are directly determined by the consistent editorial policy aimed at improving the quality of expertise, openness, and international cooperation.

The article considers the relationship between theoretical crises in sociology and the influence of experimental science, which emerged in Europe in the mid-18th century as a result of the scientific revolution primarily associated with Galileo and Newton. The authors argue that positivist sociology in Europe imitated natural experimental sciences, which determined the understanding of the object of sociological study (society) as a natural phenomenon (similar to nature in natural sciences) developing according to the same (universal) laws and regularities. The imitative nature of positivist sociology is also manifested in the fact that, like natural sciences, on the one hand, it demonstrates the priority of the theoretical over the empirical, while, on the other hand, considers it important to collect empirical data through measurement procedures, i.e., positivist sociology aims at connecting theory and practice. The authors believe that theoretical crises of sociology are determined by the impossibility of developing sociology, an essentially one of humanities, according to the canons of natural sciences. And it is positivist methodology that is largely responsible for these crises, as it was the first in time and dominated throughout the 20th century. Given the specific nature of sociology’s origins and development, it is essential for it to skillfully combine canons of natural and human sciences. Therefore, sociology should not only develop measurement procedures but also expand its conceptual framework in cooperation with humanities.

The article presents some approaches to the conceptualization of indigenous methodologies, focusing on the context of research and representation of its results; the position of the scientist, whose identity is articulated in terms of indigeneity and primordiality; the principle of dichotomization as distinguishing between the positions of indigenous (inside) and non-indigenous (outside) researchers. Indigenous methodologies are understood as a specific system of knowledge production and a means of decolonizing knowledge and methodology. When presented in social discourse as a culturally determined phenomenon, they are not limited to culture and sociality of indigenous peoples but have a significant ethical and political dimension, which includes the indigenous peoples’ overcoming of the stigma of being an object of research. Indigenous methodologies are considered as focusing on the context of research design and representing its results rather than applying specific methods and procedures. They are understood as a version of Anthropology at Home conducted in one’s native community (society) and associated with the concept of indigeneity. Within indigenous methodologies, the scientist’s ethnic identity is considered as an “epistemological” or “methodological” privilege and is linked to indigenous peoples’ access to knowledge. There are several interpretations of the position of the researcher who appeals to one’s belonging to the world of indigenous peoples: (a) an expression of an authentic worldview from within; (b) a cultural translation implying the representation of cultural forms as authentic in an intercultural context. In the latter case, the focus is on multiple connections between subject and object, their partial overlap and patterns of transformation of the identity of the indigenous anthropologist involved in the study of one’s native culture. In a broader sense, indigenization of social theory means the search for concepts and methods rooted in the local sociocultural context, which deprives western institutions of the monopoly on knowledge production.

The article considers some of the artistic and scientific ideas of the remarkable social philosopher Valerian Nikolaevich Muraviev about labor and production organization in Henry Ford’s rural development projects in connection with the projects for modernization of social life in the USSR. In his writings on diverse issues of history, war, revolution and construction of socialism, Muraviev quite accurately and profoundly noted the enormous significance and role of the peasantry in Russian history and Russian revolution. The author focuses on the images and ideas of Muraviev’s unfinished satirical work “The story of how Yaichkin became Ford” and then considers some Ford’s technocratic projects related to experiments in overcoming inequality between the city and the countryside, including positive and negative estimates of Soviet and foreign authors of Ford’s agricultural technologies, agrotowns, and rural cultural initiatives. The article provides a brief overview of the USSR’s automobile projects proposed by the prominent Soviet Bolshevik Valerian Valerianovich Obolensky (party pseudonym - Nikolai Osinsky) as related to Ford’s American projects, emphasizing that in the real conditions of capitalism and socialism both American and Soviet motorization projects led to the intensification and deepening of social and environmental contradictions in social life. In the final part of the article, Ford’s agrarian ideas are considered from the perspective of the philosophy of the common cause of Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov and his follower Valerian Nikolaevich Muraviev.

Based on the data of the nationwide survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS in October 2025 (N = 2000), the authors show that actual adaptability to external conditions and objective indicators of adaptation to them are different phenomena. Moreover, objective indicators of adaptability have less heuristic potential than those based on personal perception of the relationship between one’s needs and ability to satisfy them. The adaptive potential of Russians is quite high: about a third can be considered well-adapted, half - poorly adapted, and the rest - moderately adapted. For younger people, the corresponding indicators are even more favorable: the share of well-adapted is almost 45 %, while the share of maladapted - a quarter of that. Poorly adapted Russians suffer primarily from health problems due to lack of access to medical care; financial problems, especially those limiting their ability to spend free time; and social insecurity in case of losing job. According to the regression analysis, factors that increase chances of being classified as poorly adapted include poor health, employment in low-level trade and service jobs or low- and medium-skilled blue-collar jobs, unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s life and lack of long-term planning skills. For younger people, only the last two factors are important. The most significant factors for successful adaptation, in addition to good health, include being a part of high-resource social networks, taking personal responsibility for one’s life, and a belief in one’s own efforts for achieving success (for younger people only health). The decisive role of health in successful adaptation suggests the inadequacy of the current social policy for Russians with poor health.

Since the early 2020s, Russian society has undergone significant transformations driven by digitalization, foreign policy and economic shocks, and shifts in employment structures and forms of inequality. All these factors affect social stratification and, ultimately, social structure. The article is based on the analysis of publications in specialized Russian academic journals and shows how Russian sociology describes and interprets new processes at the intersection of sociodynamics and stratification analysis. The author identifies the main research directions and findings in sociodynamics, social structure and stratification of Russian society based on the systematic analysis of 41 articles published from 2020 to 2025 in leading Russian journals, using key words related to social-economic processes, social structure, mobility, and inequality. These articles were grouped into two super-clusters - “Social-Economic Processes and Sociodynamics” and “Social Structure and Stratification”, with the latter divided into five thematic clusters to identify dominant research agendas. The study reveals several lines of analysis developing in Russian sociology: conceptualizing new trends in sociodynamics; adapting classical and Neo-Weberian theories to Russian realities (including the development of more complex stratification schemes and attempts to construct alternative explanatory concepts); examining resources for social mobility; exploring the interplay between sociodynamics and the perception of inequality. Particular attention is paid to the theoretical-methodological foundations of publications, the data used, and the limitations of applied approaches. The author argues that there is a weak link between studies of stratification and the analysis of broader shifts in sociodynamics; persistent conceptual ambiguity of key categories; insufficient study of the lower strata; lack of interdisciplinary research. These findings allow to refine the research agenda and to identify promising directions for the study of social structure and sociodynamics of Russian society.

The transfer of the concept of “transmediality” from media theory to the field of political sociology, although undoubtedly heuristically justified, raises the methodological question of excessive metaphor and fuzziness of application. The article aims at bridging this gap by developing a clear analytical model for the study of transmedia political narratives and operationalization of related concepts. The article’s methodological basis is a systematic analysis of scientific literature, theoretical modeling and an illustrative case study. The conducted study allowed the authors to present an original three-level model of the transmedia political narratives analysis. The first, ideological-mythological, level focuses on the basic plot, archetypes and key characters of the narrative. The second, media-platform, level reveals the architecture of the distribution of semantic elements through specific communication channels, in which each platform format makes a unique contribution to the revealing of the common “universe”. The third, praxeological, level analyzes the audience’s engagement practices - from co-creation of content to participation in rituals through which narratives materialize in social actions. The authors’ main conclusion is that the concept of transmedia political narratives provides a productive tool for analyzing contemporary ideologies that function not as rigid doctrines but as decentralized, adaptive and involving systems of meaning generation. However, application of this tool requires a consistent interdisciplinary approach that takes into account the specifics of the political field.

The Escalating Actions Structural Theory (EAST) considers social action as an outcome of the interplay between implicit and explicit driving forces within the process of action escalation. Two primary forms of this escalation outcome are “prescribed” and “deliberate” actions. The former implies more or less unconscious use of pre-existing behavioral patterns, access to which depends on the actor’s experience; the latter implies conscious elaboration of a course of action adapted to the situation, which depends on the actor’s potential in reasoning. Thus, two distinct domains of social experience and cultural capital compete for control over escalation process and resulting actions. The article presents the findings from the test of the EAST’s ability to distinguish between social groups and behavioral domains based on the balance between prescribed and intentional actions. The study is based on the empirical data on family formation practices - marriage and cohabitation - in Russia over the past seventy years. Adoption patterns for cohabitation culture versus marriage differ between men and women: unlike men, women have not yet developed an effective culture of cohabitation. Two domains differ in dynamics of cultural regulators, providing examples of both cultural rise (intentional actions predominate under the practice’s expansion) and decline (prescribed actions prevail under the practice’s contraction). The study confirmed the hypothesis that social actions resulting in the same outcome but following different escalation trajectories tend to have different social consequences. In both marriage and cohabitation, a prescribed course of action fosters a more effective partnership - one that endures longer and results in more children. Thus, as an effective culture of cohabitation develops among women, this practice will become more socially productive, leading to longer-lasting unions and more children.