This issue of the Russian Sociological Review deals with the transformation of the public and the private in the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We could not but respond to current events since they are not only important for understanding the constitution of contemporary societies, but also challenge many common notions of the social sciences. We decided to focus on this topic, first of all, because the question of the private and the public constitutes the main “nerve” of the sociopolitical processes triggered by the pandemic. In this introduction to the issue, we will offer some general considerations regarding the dynamics of recent changes, and a more detailed outline of the issue’s idea and overview of the papers published here.

Оттхайн Рамштедт (Otthein (Otto-Heinrich) Rammstedt) (26.01.1938, Дортмунд — 27.01.2020, Мангейм)

In April 2017 the editorial board of Russian Sociological Review announced a call for papers for its regular annual special issue. We invited scholars from a broad range of social science disciplines to reflect on one of the core problems of sociology — social order. The papers collected here are valuable contributions to their respective fields covering this more general one. We selected them from many proposals and draft manuscripts under a meticulous procedure of peer-review but, while being satisfied with the result of this selection, we cannot but confess a slight disappointment reconsidering our own starting point. It seems less sophisticated now; we could have got more diverse papers if we formulated better what we aimed to achieve