Museum sociology in the context of socio-historical changes

Abstract

The urgent need to study museum visitors in Russia usually arose during periods of qualitative reforms in the museum sphere, shortly after cardinal social changes. Such milestones in Russia were the 1920s–1930s, the 1960s–1970s, and the 1990s–2000s. Research at this time had significant results. The purpose of the study is to describe the historical context to explain the activation of the audience analysis. The novelty of this approach consists in substantiating the need for sociological research and indicates ways to improve them through interdisciplinary cooperation of sociologists, museologists, historians, art historians and other specialists. The first breakthrough was aimed at attracting the proletariat that won the revolution to the museum for its elementary education. This helped to retain the museum in the USSR as a type of institution. The museum boom of the 1960s pushed the state to more carefully calculate the results of the work of museums and monitor them. During this period, the museum began to be perceived as one of the tools for educating a Soviet citizen. The third period coincided with a wave of commercialization, and museums entered into a struggle for their audience through the planning of exhibition and teaching activities, and the Internet. The analyzed material proves that sociological research is activated when museums become the arena of revolutionary or communication experiments, and they need to be considered in a historical context.