The Yuri Levada Archives (YLA) collect critical studies and biographical materials about Yuri Levada (1930-2006) and his era. This web-based, open-source project serves as a clearing house for those interested in Levada scholarhsip and biographical methods of research. Postings on the YLA web site are divided into several overlapping sections: “Documents and Papers,” “Biographical Materials,” “Critical Assessments,” “Levda in the News” and “Comments and Dialogues.” The biographical section contains previously published materials, as well as new interviews and memoirs.  The theoretical groundwork for this undertaking is laid out in an article “Signing in the Flesh: Notes on Pragmatist Hermeneutics,” http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Sept07STFeature.pdf, and preliminary results are summed up in B. Doktorov's study "In Search of 'Real Turth': Notes on Levada's Biogahpy" and D. Shalin's paper "Phenomenological Foundations of Theoretical Practice: Biocritical Notes on Y. A. Levada" (PDF).

Socrates believed that the unexamined life is not worth living and extolled bios philosophicus or bios theoretikos.  We take this to mean that our lives must be informed by principles and our principles embodied in our lives.  Levada's life was dedicated to the science of society, and the Levada archives are a tribute to a distinguished sociolgist, as well as an attempt to explore the intersection between the biographical and theoretical corpus of Yuri Levada and people of his era. 

We see the YLA as a collective enterprise, with all those interested sharing info, writing papers, offering comments, engaging in dialogues, serving as sounding boards for each other.  This promises to be a different kind of history and study of society, an inquiry that transgresses the lines separating the subject and object of research, where we can not only do justice to our teachers, colleagues, and friends, but also engage in collectively-festive therapy, settle some old accounts in the spirit of charity and fairness, and exorcise the ghosts of academic years past. 

The site co-directors are Boris Doktorov, bdoktorov@inbox.ru, and Dmitri Shalin, shalin@unlv.nevada.edu. The site managers welcome readers’ comments and contributions. If you had a chance to observe Yuri Aleksandrovich or heard a tale worth retelling, you can contribute a memoir or have your interview recorded and added to the Levada archives.  More online resources can be found in the Goffman Archives, International Biography Initiative, Intercyberlibrary, Pragmacyberlibrary,and Culture and Intelligentsia sections of the Center for Democratic Culture web site.