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This is a contribution to the sociology and social epistemology of knowledge production in Russian social sciences today. In the initial section, the epistemic status and social function of Soviet social scientific discourse are characterized in terms of textual forms and their modes of (re-)production. The remaining sections detail the course of the restructuration of social scientific discourse since the fall of the Soviet Union and draw on extant empirical sources, in particular studies of bibliographical rubrics, thematic repertoires, and current textual forms throughout the public sphere and the academic establishment in Russia. An underlying concern is the shifting status of the intellectual in the wider socio-cultural context as reflected in language usage and its textual embodiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on J. Michael Brittain's article "National Limits of Information Flow," published in the July/August 1985 issue of the periodical "Society." Examination of whether footnotes are the measure of the scientific character of the social sciences; Practice of footnoting as evidence of erudition and scholarly attainment; Development of social sciences in the Soviet Union which are largely modeled on American patterns.