Analysis of Social Networks in the Historical Sociology of Culture (On the Basis of Soviet Children's Literature of 1954-1957)[Анализ Социальных Сетей В Исторической Социологии Культуры (На Материале Советской Детской Литературы 1954—1957 Годов)]

This paper is aimed at grounding of applicability of social network analysis to historical sociology of literature. In modern studies in cultural sociology, the scholars’ attention is paid mostly not to social networks that connect authors, editors, translators, and readers, but to the communication channels or the networks for texts’ widespread – in other words, to the phenomena, resembling the social media on the Internet. In our opinion, communication here is only particular case in the wide range of social interactions in literary communities. Study of these communities from the viewpoint of social network analysis allows to discern the new aspects of literary works’ production and reception, and to shed new light on the well-known episodes of literary history. The subject of the case study in this paper is the quick transformation of the social ties between the Soviet children’s writers, critics, and literary institutions in 1954-57. This transformation led to the total reshaping of landscape of the Soviet children’s literature. This case study gives ground for consideration the deeper principles that regulated networking and institutional dynamics of the late-Soviet culture, as well as the specific features of the Soviet cultural networks if comparing them with the samples discussed in English-language sociological scholarship.