A Discipline in transition?: From sovietology to ‘Transitology’

The collapse of the Soviet system and its partners in the ‘communist’ world poses problems of theory for scholars, as well as practical problems of managing a transition to a new social, political and economic system on the part of the peoples and governments concerned. Previous understanding of the nature of the ‘communist’ system has come under fresh scrutiny, with ‘totalitarianism’, ‘socialism’, ‘communism’ and other concepts in the established literature of sovietology giving way to fresh analysis, as scholars attempt to come to terms with the collapse and the transition. There are limits to the value of studies of ‘comparative democratization’: in fact, the proximity of the system undergoing transition to the core of the capitalist and liberal‐democratic world is a critical variable in the transition. The role of the state in the transition is likewise crucial, and needs to be carefully studied. These features require the substitution of comparative study for the ghetto style of research that characterized approaches to the former communist system.