Page "History of sociology" Paragraph 13

During the Interwar period, sociology was undermined by totalitarian governments for reasons of ostensible political control.

After the Russian Revolution, sociology was gradually " politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized " until it virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union.

In China, the discipline was banned with semiotics, comparative linguistics and cybernetics as " Bourgeois pseudoscience " in 1952, not to return until 1979.

During the same period, however, sociology was also undermined by conservative universities in the West.

This was due, in part, to perceptions of the subject as possessing an inherent tendency, through its own aims and remit, toward liberal or left wing thought.

Given that the subject was founded by structural functionalists ; concerned with organic cohesion and social solidarity, this view was somewhat groundless ( though it was Parsons who had introduced Durkheim to American audiences, and his interpretation has been criticized for a latent conservatism ).