[1] The notion of culturology (Russian: культурология), as an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities, may be traced in the Soviet Union to the late 1960s and associated with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Aleksei Losev, Sergey Averintsev, Georgy Gachev, Juri Lotman, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Edward Markarian, and others.
Between 1980 and 1990, culturology received official recognition in Russia and was legalized as a form of science and a subject of study for institutions of higher learning.
Many prominent Soviet and Russian scholars like V. V. Ivanov, S. S. Averintsev, A. Y. Gurevich, M. L. Gasparov, G. S. Knabe, E. M. Miletinskiy, V. N. Romanov, T. V. Vasilyeva, N. V. Braginskaya, V. V. Bibikhin, Alexander Dobrokhotov have worked there.
[1] Following White, philosopher of science Mario Bunge (1919-2020) defined culturology as the sociological, economic, political, and historical study of concrete cultural systems.
[12] Bunge's systemic and materialist approach to the study of culture has given birth to a variety of new fields of research in the social sciences.