ABSTRACT
The analysis of social movements and independent social initiatives is an indispensable part of our study of Soviet society in the midst of its great transformation. It is in this context above all that the best contemporary social science, free of the common bias for the leaderships and central elites characteristic of both older scholarship and present-day journalism, can make its most important contribution. The chapters of the present volume, taken as a whole, represent the first comprehensive assessment of the world of social movements and collective action in the Soviet Union, and the information they provide in itself expands our knowledge and potentially our comprehension of the dramatic processes now taking place.
