Leading sociologists pay tribute to Tatyana Zaslavskaya

On January 17 the roundtable “Social Sciences and Government” in tribute to the prominent Russian sociologist, economist and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Tatyana Zaslavskaya took place as part of the Gaidar Forum – one of the major discussion platforms.

The experts in economics and sociology discussed how science influences formation of political decisions and cooperation of economists and sociologists in shaping interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of social processes.

In her welcoming speech the moderator of the roundtable, Head of the Department of Social and Economic Systems and Social Policy of the National Research University – Higher School of Economics Marina Shabanova, told about professional way of Tatyana Zaslavskaya. “Her research works were acknowledged by both sociologists and economists, however, it will take us time to truly assess her contribution in science,” the expert noted.

Head of the RANEPA’s Department of Economic Theory and Politics Abel Aganbegyan mentioned a lot of interesting facts from Zaslavskaya’s life. “Tatyana Ivanovna left enormous scientific heritage to us. She was an outstanding scientist and a fundamental researcher, she always pursued her goals and was committed to her job,” he emphasized.

In his speech the Dean of the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University Aleksandr Auzan made some quotes from the famous public lecture by Tatyana Zaslavskaya “Human Factor in Transformation of the Russian Society”. “All efforts to model formal institutions ignoring the facts that they live simultaneously with informal institutions are the reason why you will have wrong “rules of the game”. Therefore, as Tatyana Ivanovna correctly writes, institutional situation worsens,” the expert developed the idea of open social transformation space.

Head of the Department of Social Problems of the Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Tatyana Bogomolova presented the activities of Novosibirsk School of Economics and Sociology. “Belonging to the prominent economic school founded by Tatyana Zaslavskaya provides huge support as you are surrounded by like-minded people who share a common language with you, but at the same time it means serious responsibility. The foundations of our economic school laid by Zaslavskaya are preserved and maintained today as well,” the speaker noted.

“Why do we need to turn to Tatyana Zaslavskaya’s research outcomes and heritage? Because it will facilitate overcoming methodological nationalism, or to be more precise, methodological anti-nationalism in the post-soviet social science and allow us to avoid locality in the content,” Head of the Department of Social Structure and Social Relations of the Faculty of Sociology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Vice President of the Ukrainian Sociological Association Olga Kutsenko noted.

At the end of the meeting, the experts discussed the importance Zaslavskaya’s key works have today.

Tatyana Zaslavskaya was a prominent Russian sociologist, economist and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1950–1963 she worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Economy of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1960s to 1988 she worked in Novosibirsk at the Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences, as Head of the Department of Social Problems well-known for its research results in Russia and abroad. In 1960s she established the Novosibirsk School of Economics and Sociology which had a significant impact on the development of sociology in the soviet period. In the 1980s Tatyana Zaslavskaya headed the first center for public opinion studies in the Soviet Union – the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM). From 2006 Tatyana Zaslavskaya headed a faculty at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences of the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation (since 2011 – Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)).