Sociological study of the Belarusian province: history and current state

Abstract

The history and current state of the sociological study of the Belarusian province are considered. It is established that in tsarist Russia, the sociological study of the province was reduced to the analysis of various aspects of rural life. Social and hygienic surveys of the village were carried out, the specifics of peasant life and the religiosity of the villagers were considered. The sociological analysis of the village in the pre-revolutionary period can be found in the works of A. S. Prugavin, V. V. Tenishev, M. A. Kharuzin, N. A. Yanchuk and others. In the period from 1917 to the early 1930s, the study of the village continued: sociological-statistical, sociological-political and socio-hygienic surveys of villages, volosts and counties were organised. N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Todorskii, A. V. Chayanov, and others studied the village during this period. During the time of the BSSR, rural themes were presented in the works of S. J. Wol’fson, B. J. Smulevich and S. M. Vasileiskii. In the period from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, sociological studies of the village were not conducted, since sociology was banned. In the 1960s and 80s, the problems of provincial research expanded and covered the issues of urban-rural interaction caused by the migration of peasants, as well as the urbanisation and industrialisation of the village. T. I. Zaslavskaya, L V. Korel’, R. V. Ryvkina, V. I. Staroverov and others studied migration movements of rural population to cities. In the works of T. I. Zaslavskaya and R. V. Ryvkina, the issues of urbanisation and industrialisation of the village were also considered. N. A. Aitov and R. B. Kamaev found that the effective functioning of agriculture is impossible without the help of cities. Independent studies of the provincial community have begun in the Republic of Belarus. They assumed a theoretical analysis of the basic concepts within the framework of this topic, the study of lifestyle, mentality, identity, value orientations, civic behaviour and social well-being of the provincial population. The Belarusian province was studied by R. A. Smirnova, T. V. Kuz’menko, T. S. Balakireva and others. At the present stage, A. Y. Sakovich has identified a new research area – the sociology of the province, within which special attention is paid to the development of rural settlements. The author proposes a new approach to solving the problem of staffing the agro-industrial complex.