The academic symposium on “Historical Sociology: Empire and Nation-state Development”, as a part of an academic exchange program: “First-class Partnership” between Zhejiang University and University of Chicago, was held in Zhejiang University on 14th July. The Symposium, chaired by Professor Zhao Dingxin of Recruitment Program of Global Experts at Zhejiang University, and tenure from Dept. of Sociology at University of Chicago, was co-organized by Department of Sociology, Local Government and Social Governance Research Center, and Research Institute of Social Sciences, Zhejiang University as well as Department of Sociology, University of Chicago. The scholars from University of Chicago, Princeton University, State University of New York at Albany, University of Edinburgh, Nanjing University and Fudan University exchanged their views on the logic and different results of America and the Soviet Union in transforming from traditional empires to nation-states in the perspectives of war, legal violent monopoly and elite self-interest, etc. from historical sociology.

The Symposium was composed of two subjects. Professor Mark R. Beissinge delivered a speech on “The Soviet Union empire—Soviet Union and post-Soviet Union age”, which held that nationalism played a key role in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Over 100 organized activities appealing to nationalism frequently broke out in the Soviet Union between 1987 and 1991. Permitted by the Soviet Union, the nationalism in the Soviet Union became politicalized and these conflicts widened the divergence within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in tackling the problem, thus leading to the chaos in the institution, reduction in the authority of government mechanism and in the power of government oppression, finally causing the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several nation-states. Then Professor Liliana Riga made wonderful comments on Professor Beissinger by saying that “no matter how divergent the opinions may appear on the disintegration of the Soviet Union, for most Western scholars, it is something to be celebrated, as they think it is a triump of Western freedom and democracy.”

However, Professor Richard Lachmann made a speech on “Elite self-interest and debilitation of America”, which offered an elite perspective different from the Marxist class theory for the scholars on national institutions and the relation of social production, justified the contigency, rather than inevitability of capitalism; meanwhile, the speech explored the “debilitation” signs of America and its society in the features of elite self-interest. Later, Professor James Kennedy explained the involuntary emergence of capitalism and economic transformations by taking the elite fighting in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy as examples and commented the influence of interest group formations on social structure in the development of American capitalism.