Abstract

The interview with the well-known Russian sociologist Alexander Kovalev was recorded in 1998 as a part of the project “The Seminar Movement in Sociology: the Second Science, or The Glass Bead Game”. It is published to commemorate Kovalev. In this interview, Kovalev primarily discusses the famous seminar organized by Yuri Levada of which Kovalev was a participant. Kovalev focuses on his academic career in sociology when the discipline was reborn in the USSR after long period of oblivion. He also considers a variety of pioneering theoretical studies and reception of western sociological ideas through translations and overviews. Kovalev was interviewed about the participants of the seminars and their motivation, the topics discussed at the seminar meetings and the seminar organizers and leaders of Soviet Sociology in the 1960–70s. Additionally, Kovalev provides a broader understanding of the seminar movement in the social sciences, its popularity among soviet intelligentsia and its functions which spread far beyond academic ones. Following this interview it is possible to argue that the major function of Levada’s seminars was educational. First of all, the seminars provided members of the sociological community with an education in theoretical foundations of the discipline. This type of education was impossible within the acceptable general sociological theory, specifically historical materialism. Secondly, these seminars educated the intelligentsia and provided knowledge of western social theories