Sociology and Sociologists During the Thirty Years of Estonia’s Post-Socialist Transformation

Sociology, as it emerged in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Khrushchevian thaw of the 1960s, was assigned the task of giving decision mak-ers numerical feedback about the population’s attitudes and living conditions. It functioned as a substitute for the feedback mechanisms that in the West were provided by markets, political democracy and civil society. With the glasnost’ pol-icies initiated in 1986, possibilities of criticizing the system were opened, but scien-tists continued to hold high esteem in the new situation also. For a few years dur-ing and immediately after the revolutionary period, sociologists played a visible role in politics. Since early 1990s, they have rather avoided taking party political stance and acted as experts on certain policy areas, such as social policies and ethnic minority integration. Sociologists have generally shared the political elite’s quest for modernization and westernization, but they have reacted against grow-ing inequality. Some of their political initiatives gained moderate success when they pointed at issues potentially jeopardizing Estonia’s membership in the Euro-pean Union. During recent years, a right-wing populism is emerging that is less concerned about the previously prevailing modernizing and westernizing agenda, and outright questions the need for evidence-based politics.