The article discusses the heuristic and methodological potential of historical sociology as one of the most dynamically developing disciplines of modern social and scientific knowledge. It is argued that this area of research is functionally capable of taking on the role of today's analytical philosophy of history in the form of integrity and, at the same time, the operational reflection of the historical experience of our country. The article points out the deficient nature of previous conceptualizations of the domestic past from the point of view of historical sociology. First, the development of this discipline in the West is briefly analyzed, starting with the classics of world sociology. The qualitative and quantitative growth of historical and sociological research in the second half of the 20th century—which led to a significant expansion of the explanatory repertoire of macrosociology—is highlighted. Next, the ambivalent position of historical sociology in Russia is discussed, where—despite the existing interest in its methodological categories and substantive results—a full-fledged institutionalization of this sociological discipline has not yet occurred. Thus, a conclusion is made about the existence of a serious local tradition of interest in historical-sociological synthesis, starting with the classics of historiography and pioneers of Russian sociology at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time, substantial progress is highlighted on the part of the domestic social-scientific community in the reception of the achievements of world-historical sociology at the beginning of the 21st century. The next section shows the particular relevance of modern historical-sociological approaches to the problematization of the past in the context of the domestic epistemological situation. A number of the most promising thematic complexes in modern Russian academia are highlighted. In conclusion, we highlight issues concerning framework research and scientific organization faced by historical sociology in Russia.

The essay presents its author's understanding of historical sociology, as well as a view on how to practice historical sociology. The preconditions that have been necessary for the emergence of historical sociology from the American intellectual tradition are the following: first, to overcome the 'historiosophical ahistoricism' of classical sociology and the ahistoricism of early empirical sociology in the United States. Second, the emergence of 'social history' in Europe under the influence of the Great War and the social sciences rejecting the idea of progress in its evolutionary and revolutionary interpretations. The essay provides a detailed investigation of the features of the 'new historical science' in comparison with its traditional counterpart, as well as exploring the similarities and differences between social history and historical sociology. Social history is considered as an intermediate link between the classical 'sociology of history' and American historical sociology. Following social history, historical sociology turns to comparative studies and quantitative methods, but at the same time does not abandon hermeneutics. Historical sociology presupposes a mutual weakening of the nomothetics of classical 'grand theories' and the ideography of traditional history. It also implies a full-fledged sociological investigation of historical phenomena using procedures accepted in empirical sociology, rather than the reinterpretation of historical research in sociological-theoretical terms. This results in the emergence of special (rather than general) processual and medium-level theories of social change based on historical facts. Historical sociology focuses on theoretical generalizations, which clearly distinguishes it from social history. The essay investigates the different approaches and purposes of using the comparative historical method — and the quantitative methods that complement it. In turn, their utilization leads to problems with the acceptance of their results by traditional historians specialized in a single country and on studying primary sources in the original. Instead of concluding, the author discusses his experience and participation in the institutionalization of historical sociology in Russia and points out the problems hindering it.

The article deals with attempts to explain the collapse of the Soviet version of modernity — and the disintegration of the USSR — in (post)-Sovietology and historical sociology. It is argued that (post)-Sovietological studies were often characterized by a certain degree of ideological bias. In these studies, the example of “Soviet collapse” was generally used for a confirmation of earlier approaches to Soviet history. At the same time, they mostly focused on the immediate preconditions of that event rather than on long-term historical processes. The shortcomings of this approach can be overcome if we draw on historical sociology. The article considers the prediction of disintegration of the USSR offered by Randall Collins and Johann Arnason's analysis of the Soviet version of modernity. Both sociologists characterized the Soviet collapse in the context of long-term historical dynamics. While Collins's approach demonstrates a peculiar geopolitical determinism, Arnason singles out various factors of the dynamics of the alternative version of modernity. In the first half of the 1990s, Arnason applied his model of imperial modernization to the Soviet system, but later emphasized the civilizational aspects of communist modernity. This can also be seen in his evaluation of the Soviet collapse. In the literature on Soviet collapse, a contrast between the USSR and China is often highlighted, with structural and particularly economic factors being commonly highlighted. In contrast, the article argues that — for a comprehensive understanding of transformation processes in China — we need to consider the cultural sphere by drawing on sociological civilizational analysis.

The article presents a systemic and historical view of wars taking into account the generalization of modern concepts about their nature and causes. The generalization is produced on the basis of a political and sociological apparatus with such basic concepts as: "concerns" of different types (including "interests", "motives", "goals", "values"), an extension of the challenge-response scheme (A. Toynbee), positive and negative "reinforcement" (Thorndike-Skinner), and "support structures" (A. Stinchcombe). All the concerns related to wars are based on the social universals of M. Weber and M. Mann: power-security, power-dominance, prestige-dignity-legitimacy, and wealth-resources-access to resources. Geopolitical concerns (regarding control over territories), symbolic stakes, and concerns with maintaining the international order are considered. The prioritization of relevant concerns changes in both the long run of social evolution and the short run of dynamics of interactions. The article considers spiral dynamics as a dynamic model of the cause of unintended wars "that no one wanted." Relevant decisions and actions of rulers and elites related to war are analyzed in the context of fast and slow thinking according to D. Kahneman. The general principles of social interaction and social evolution allow us to judge the conditions that increase and decrease the probability of new wars, as well as the regularities of the dynamics and termination of wars. Empirical generalizations of the characteristics of wars in world history made by modern specialists (S. Van Evera, G. Cashman, etc.) are discussed. It is shown what role wars play in the co-evolution of social, mental, and techno-natural orders, as well as in social evolution in general.

The uncertain epistemological status of charisma is largely due to its polysemy and polymorphism. Max Weber thematizes it in a variety of contexts and meanings — distinguishing between magical, religious charisma and the charisma of reason, highlighting the trajectories of routinization and objectification of charisma, typologizing different types of prophecies. In turn, the multiple (re)actualizations of this "brilliant concept” [Rose] as reinforcements of their own theories in the form of varieties of symbolic capital, resonance, the everyday, the re-personalized, or the risky charisma lead to either semantic compression or the blurring of meaning, both within sociological theory and in interdisciplinary discourse. To define the scientific content of charisma, the authors propose to thematize it in historical macrosociology. The key question is addressed to the interdisciplinary connections in Weber's intellectual heritage — is the category "charisma” attributable to Weber the historian or Weber the sociologist?

The clarification of the epistemological status of charisma, expressed in its dual character (phenomenon vs. ideal type), becomes possible thanks to the discussion of a corpus of the classic texts by two prominent German Weberologists — W. Schluchter and F. Tenbruck. In its turn, the reconstruction and systematization of approaches of Weberian historical macrosociology allows us to clarify the boundaries and possibilities of the category's application. Thus, the evolutionary-theoretical perspective defines the heuristic potential of charisma in terms of reflecting the dynamics of cultural and value orientations in the process of emergence and consolidation of social order and institutional structures. The comparative-historical approach, in turn, defines the relationship between the analytical and empirical levels of Weber's sociology through the "immersion” of an ideal-typical construct in a real historical narrative. In this way, historical macrosociology overcomes the most valid criticisms (S. Turner) of the category's failure, heterogeneity, and its residual character.

The idea of the police as a "good order” from the Polizeiwissenschaft of absolutism was developed in the biopolitical model of caring for the population of the Modern era, engaged in ensuring safety and well-being. Being a product of mass society, the modern state has focused on influencing public opinion. In the XIX-XX centuries, there was a counter-movement of police supervision and art which gave rise to 'police aesthetics'. Cinematography was an effective means of forming a desirable image of the Soviet militia in the post-war period of normalization of public life. By contributing to the Soviet myth of developed socialism, militia cinema contributed to a screento-life transfer of a new norm of trust between representatives of power and citizens. This constructivist cinema involved the viewer in the cinematic reality by likening them to the main character, a militiaman who acts as a moral guide. In addition to forming the image of the 'familial militia', intellectual militia cinema — with its focus on professionalism — is actively developing. The most popular version of the latter is militia cinema that thematizes the moral rightness of militia officers fighting crime in the name of Soviet citizens. Involvement in the cinematic reality through assimilation, novelty, memory, and imagination included the romanticization of the historical events of the revolution. Militia cinema was inverted during the years of the perestroika. It exploited the effect of novelty associated with the viewer's immersion in emerging market relations. The viewer's interest was focused on the wrong, criminal, side of public life. Crime is romanticized, the militia is stigmatized. From constructing the myth of cooperation between the government and the population, militia cinema moves on to deconstructing the myth, achieving an effect of denigration. The fashion for American cinema brings elements of action, thriller, horror. The viewer is no longer included in the imperious project of transforming reality; they are attracted by the illusion, the spectacle. The latest police cinema, overcoming total deconstructionism, is busy reconstructing the spirit of Soviet militia cinema in modern settings. Oscillating between the intention to generate positive images of the police and the demonstration of the "truth of life”, modern police cinema contains the natal shoots of a new cinema in which the image of the police is important for the normalization of public life.

The review describes the origins of sports sociology in Great Britain within the "Leicester School" of Historical Sociology of Norbert Elias, explaining the causes for the strong influence of the ideas of Elysianism on the present-day international sociology of sports. The paper is based on an informal interview in 2010 with Eric Dunning, the founding father of the British Sociology of Sport, co-author and student of Norbert Elias. The overall development of the historical and sociological "Leicester School" of the 1960s and 1970s, its influence on the sociology of Great Britain, as well as the role of Elias and Ilya Neustadt in its formation are shown. The contemporary historical and sociological tradition of social analysis, inspired by the ideas of Elias and called the 'sociology of process' or 'figurative research', is described. Its key features are indicated: focus on relations-in-progress, relativism, studies of phenomena in their dynamics, the collection of historical materials, comparative analysis, and interdisciplinarity. The seminal works of Dunning and Elias on sports sociology are considered, in addition to the early development of this field of studies. It is noted that both authors viewed sport and leisure activities as a means to understand society and proposed a sociological interpretation of sport as a tool for the civilizational process. Their work was based not only on a theoretical framework, but also on extensive historical research. This contributed to the early acceptance of the ideas of Leicester School during the establishment of international sports sociology in the 1960s.

This article is a critical analysis of the historical and sociological works of the American political anthropologist J. S. Scott (1936-2024). His works were largely related to the study of the contradictions of social development between the city and the village. This topic is presented especially deeply and comprehensively in Scott's monographs of his late intellectual period: 'Seeing Like a State' (1998), 'The Art of Being Ungovernable' (2006), and 'Against the Grain' (2016). In these works, Scott analyzed—practically in retrospective order—several key rural-urban contradictions and paradoxes of social development from the era of high modernism of the 19th-20th centuries to the era of the emergence of the first city-states in the 6th millennium BC. Scott based his analysis on extensive regional comparative studies and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, ecology, and political science. The problem of the formation, development, and expansion of state power in matters of regulating relations between city and countryside are core themes of these works. On the other hand—in matters of state-controlled relations between city and countryside—Scott highlights the influence of a third force, a third party: the so-called stateless, unsettled barbarism and anarchy that wedges itself into the regulation of rural-urban contradictions.