| Summary: | The article is dedicated to the main aim of the Soviet archaeology, which was also its feature – to study social development of ancient societies basing on archaeological sources. It was stated at the beginning of 1930s and after the WW2 a list of actual tasks was specified. In the late 1940’s – the early 1970’s they included studying of regularities and features of ancient (from primitive to feudal) societies development, reconstruction of concrete history of folks from the USSR territory, which had no written language, researches on handicrafts, swap and trade, studies of the mediaeval village history, examination of primitive society ideology, improvement of the typological method and archaeological theory, preparation of fundamental publications.
All these tasks were practically realized in work of archaeological research institutions during above mentioned period, in particular, research fellows of central and republican archaeological research establishments worked on topics related to study of social and historical problems of ancient societies basing on archaeological data. As well these problems were discussed at methodological workshops of the Institute of archaeology AS USSR and its Leningrad branch, at All-Union meetings and conferences. Soviet archaeologists completed resumptive archaeological publications with historical conclusions and chapters or even separate volumes of fundamental books dedicated to history of particular folks, regions or periods in the 1950’s – the early 1970’s.
This work on social and historical problematique determined Soviet archaeologists’ requirement for methodology development which was a cause of appearance of a new subdiscipline. The Soviet theoretical archaeology institutionalized in the early 1970s.
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