Homo Sovieticus

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Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, a political scientist at King’s College London, rejects the ‘hopelessness’ and ‘Russophobia’ of such interpretations. She calls for ‘an emotionally intelligent’ approach that is focused on ‘empathizing with the Russian population, rather than pointing to where it went wrong’. In The Red Mirror, she attempts to diagnose the Russian condition without relying on Homo Sovieticus or assuming the superiority of its imagined foil, the liberal Western subject. She proposes that polling data like Levada’s can be stripped of its Cold War-era ideological foundations and retrofitted to produce a more convincing assessment of the collective psyche. ‘You can’t step twice into the same river—a classic saying’, she writes. ‘Or can you? . . . How can we use the insights in social psychology to arrive at a less biased understanding and give credit and the blame where they are due?’ Bridges, David (1997). Education, Autonomy, and Democratic Citizenship: Philosophy in a Changing World. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-15334-8.

To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov, former director of the Analytical Center Levada, describes the makings of a "Soviet Man" as a lifelong socialization process, accompanied by a powerful propaganda machine, highly ideological education system, supported by a powerful apparatus of political repression, as well as various forms of social control, including neighbors, colleagues, or even family members. Historian Stephen Wheatcroft states that Soviet peasantry were subject to cultural destruction in the creation of the New Soviet man. [26] The homo sovieticus was made by the socialist system in a gradual way. The specific ideology of communism evoked three “virtues” in man. Obedience, fear and habit. Loyality to the system out of fear of punishment or just to be a ‘good citizen’; habit because everything was ruled and organized by the state. Each day looked very much the same. Everything was done for them and no individual initiative was allowed to take place.Communist ideology was based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, mixed with ideas of the rational progression of history Heller (Geller), Mikhail (1988). Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man. Alfred A. Knopf. pp.27, 43, 47. ISBN 978-0394569260. Heller quotes from a 1974 book "Sovetskye lyudi" ("Soviet People"): Soviet Union is the fatherland of a new, more advanced type of Homo sapiens - Homo sovieticus. Sharafutdinova grew up in the republic of Tatarstan, an oil-rich region with a majority Tatar population, and received her PhD from George Washington University. Her first book, Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism inside Russia (2010), examined the rise of corruption in the provinces. As privatization and free elections were introduced simultaneously in the early 90s, access to power meant access to property, and vice versa. Sharafutdinova identifies two political models that emerged: ‘centralized and noncompetitive’, the system favoured by the tight-knit Tatar elite, and ‘fragmented and competitive’, which characterized the Nizhnii Novgorod region under Yeltsin ally Boris Nemtsov. In the latter, politicians aired corruption scandals over the course of nasty campaigns, leading many voters to see elections as elite infighting and to respond with apathy and protest voting. As competitive democracy delegitimized itself, the Tatar model looked increasingly appealing. Popular disillusionment with democratic institutions united the self-interest of Putin’s circle with the desires of an alienated public. This, Sharafutdinova argues, is why most Russians didn’t mind when Putin abolished regional gubernatorial elections in 2004 (according to polls) and why his popularity remained high even as oil prices dropped.

It is also worth mentioning that Homo Sovieticus can be found outside Russia in the former Soviet Republics. Estonia is no exception. Estonian Soviet Man became particularly active during the coronavirus period, when the amount of distrust towards vaccines and state instructions in general peaked in some layers of Estonian society, accompanied by numerous conspiracy theories and dangerous myths about health and the virus. This phenomenon was not present only in Russian-speaking communities. The homo sovieticus should designate a positive concept, but during times it acquired many negative characteristics which were understood as inhibiting the democratic transition processes. During Soviet times the meaning and the initial purpose of homo sovieticus was to be a kind of new superman, a super human being in which Aleksandr Zinoviev seemed to believe. The man who seemed to have used the term for the first time is Joseph Novak in his book Homo sovieticus, der Mensch unter Hammer und Sichel, (Bern Stuttgart Wien, Alfred Scherz Verlag. 1962). In some sense, this corresponds well to the collective experience of the late Soviet period, when nepotism was omnipresent and upward social mobility was severely restricted by what Milovan Đilas called the rise of “ the new class,” the privileged stratum of the Communist party bureaucracy that formed the new “aristocracy” of the Soviet society. Thus, for example, if one wanted to go into prestigious areas like diplomacy, one normally had to be a son of a “party aristocrat,” (the daughters were somewhat less appreciated in that trade). I believe that there has been a virus-like intervention in the social genome of the Russian nation, a product not from American laboratories, but a result of the mixing of Russian imperialism and the new Soviet man ideas in the 20th century. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep content for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing servicesIndiferentiškas požiūris į darbą buvo išreikštas posakiu „jie vaidina, kad mums moka, mes vaidiname, kad dirbame“ Kolakowski, Leszek (2008). Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393329438. However today the concept acquired another meaning. It is described as a mentality shaped in the totalitarian communist system, the complex situation of transformation, and universal social processes. Processes of indoctrination, habituation, selective memory and the constant change of situation made the homo sovieticus who he is today. Gessen’s Homo Sovieticus seems, in the end, more a projection of liberal disappointments in the post-Soviet years than a player in the country’s recent past. A fascinating but flawed account, The Future is History presents a Russia whose future in fact stands outside history, as its people are condemned decade after decade to rehearse the same drama of tyranny and obedience.

Mutatis mutandis the post-Soviet period inherited these legacies, even absent Marxism-Leninism, in which, by the end of the Soviet era, no one had genuinely believed - not even its high priests. This Soviet cynicism continued to operate through the homo post sovieticus, who was now ruled by the former party nomenklatura, KGB officers, or state-owned farm ( sovkhoz) directors. The Soviet inherited patterns of behavior could probably explain a lot in terms of how the post-Soviet institutions were crafted and how the post-Communist patrimonial, authoritarian regimes cemented themselves. According to the British weekly The Economist, which devoted a large article to the concept of Homo sovieticus in 2011, after the fall of communism in 1991, both in Russia and in the West, there was hope that Western moral values would take root in Russia, and the country would eventually become one of the developed countries of the world. But, according to journalists, this point of view did not take into account the degree of destruction of the Russian economy, the magnitude of mental exhaustion of people and the depth of moral decay after 70 years of Soviet power. No one had any idea what type of state would replace the USSR and what it meant to "be Russian". [15] See also [ edit ] Homo Sovieticus ( cod Latin for 'Soviet Man') is a pejorative term for an average conformist person in the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern Bloc. The term was popularized by Soviet writer and sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev, who wrote the book titled Homo Sovieticus. [1]Ethics The Code of Ethics lays down the fundamental principles of the professional ethics and conduct of the authority's staff.

A pejorative term Homo Sovieticus is used to describe the concept in countries of the former Eastern Bloc. [27] [28] See also [ edit ] Communist Proletarian Internationalism in Action? Communist Legacies and Attitudes Towards Migrants in Russia. The bodies lying on the streets of Bucha, Mariupol being destroyed, theaters and even maternity wards blown up, millions of innocent civilians fleeing the country searching for safety and shelter – all of it is ridiculed and overturned by Russian propaganda and served to the millions of Russians who behave like in one of Alexander Pushkin's famous poems: "Ah, it is not difficult to deceive me, I am happy to be deceived." Of course, there are millions of people in Russia who are against the war. They participate in protests and support opposition to Putin's regime regardless of the risks to their freedom and even their lives. Clearly, it is different to protest in a democratic country vs in authoritarian/totalitarian regimes. We have seen it in Belarus and Russia for many years.

Yet the election results also revealed the reluctance of a large part of Russian society to carry on with the present system. Thousands of indignant men and women, young and old, tried to stop the fraud and protect their rights. One election monitor, who was thrown out of the polling station, wrote in his blog that “I thought I would die of shame…I did not manage to save your votes…forgive me.” Such voices may still be a minority, but the clash between these two groups was essentially a clash of civilisations—and a sign that the process of dismantling the Soviet system, which started 20 years ago, is far from over.