Latin American Studies in Russia: Themes, Achievements and Problems (To the 60th anniversary of the ILA RAS)

Abstract

This article analyzes the range of research approaches of domestic scientists to the study of socio-economic and political processes developing in Latin America and the Caribbean. The text fixes the change in theoretical paradigms that took place in the post-Soviet period, when new methods of scientific research for domestic social scientists came to replace the class Marxist-Leninist approach that did not stand the test of time: Positivism, structuralism, comparative studies, constructivism, systemic, invent and functional analysis. The peculiarity of the article is the chosen angle – priority attention to country studies, forming, according to the authors, the supporting structure of the entire building of modern Russian Latin American studies - social science, in a complex studying the problems of Latin America, comprehending the past and present of this large region. The theoretical, methodological and subject framework of the article is determined on the basis of priority selection by the authors of the most relevant, in their opinion, problems of modern Latin American studies. In other words, the article is not aimed at offering an exhaustive picture of domestic Latin American studies at the present stage, does not pretend to the indisputability of the opinions expressed and the truth in the last instance. The purpose of the authors is to broadcast their own, deeply subjective view of the subject of research, allowing to add new ideas and ac cents to its study, to focus on those problems of this. scientific directions, which until now have not received a sufficiently deep development. The study was based on the scientific publications of the staff of the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2021.