Abstract

All the social sciences are now in flux and Soviet studies even more so. Many traditional approaches prove to be useless for understanding the changed world and there is a search for new explanatory models, and even for “alternative organizing myths.” All this fosters confusion and during such periods of “paradigm change” debates assume predictable characteristics.

First of all, there appears a large gap between, in John Stuart Mill's words, “the meaning which a term bears in common acceptation” and that which the writer “intends to annex to it.” It provides a great opportunity for sniping and passionately accusing opponents of lack of conceptual rigor.