Homo Sovieticus

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We know from sociologists the relationship between institutions and human behavior is always a two-way street. Institutions condition people but, at the same time, people continuously reproduce the existing institutions. This is Anthony Giddens’ famous notion of structuration. But their parallel evolution is also not a linear process. Sometimes, there are critical junctures, that is, important historical events that reshape the institutional settings in such a way as to encourage and strengthen certain patterns of behavior.

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 ] The lead section of this article may need to be rewritten. Use the lead layout guide to ensure the section follows Wikipedia's norms and is inclusive of all essential details. ( February 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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. 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 services To explain how this process of indoctrination took place I want to mention some characteristics of an ideology. Each ideology has a claim to the absolute truth, to explain all elements of reality, especially of social reality and history. It is a doctrine, worked out to a closed logical system in which everything fits and everything has its place. It is fixed, unchanging and because of that will not correlate anymore with the present day reality after some decades, becomes outdated and is therefore doomed to fail. The base of an ideology is always a theory; one or more books to be later worked out in a practical programme designed by intellectuals or people with experience. Mostly the claim of an ideology is also to create a happy society. Negative things in life have to be accepted as being necessary to work for a positive goal and can therefore be easily used for manipulation and coercion. And finally, each ideology wants everyone to believe in it because the designers of it are truly convinced of its truth. 2.2 How the communist ideology shaped peoples minds.Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change (University of California Press, 1978), 115. Russia was much freer in the 1990s than it became under Mr Putin. But the change was gradual rather than sudden, and was based on a relationship between money and power inherited from a previous era. The privatisations of the 1990s put property in the hands of the Soviet officialdom and a small group of Russian oligarchs. As Kirill Rogov, a historian and analyst, has observed, the real problem was not that the accumulation of capital was unfair—it usually is—but that clear rules of competition and a mechanism for transferring property from less to more efficient owners were never established. Homo sovieticus was a „czlowiek zrodzony przez warunki istnienia komunistycznego (socjalistycznego) spoleczenstwa, bedacy nosicielem zasad istnienia tego spoleczenstwa, samym swoim osposobem zycia zachowujacy stosunki wewnatrz-kolektywne tego spoleczenstwa.” (Tischner 1992)

The New Soviet Woman differed greatly from the conceptions of revolutionaries preceding the 1930s. Instead of being freed from domestic concerns, she was bound to them. Though she now filled the role of man's peer in the workplace, she was also obligated to devote herself to being his helpmate in the home. [19] One of the primary roles of the New Soviet Woman was that of mother. This role became of great importance in the wake of population decline beginning in the 1920s. War and revolution had decimated the population. Legislation legalizing abortions and the increasing use of contraception—though still not that widespread—in the 1920s also contributed to the lower population numbers as women began to work more and give birth less. [24] The historian Klaus Gestwa traces the origins of the concept of Homo Sovieticus, anewman, to the 1930s. Initially Homo Sovieticus contained both the idea of the classical Marxist image of the victorious proletariat and the belief in the supreme historical destiny of the Russian nation. Like many other myths, thenewSoviet Man had a grandiose mission to make the world a better place – he was destined to end any exploitation and oppression under the Sun and finally realize the revolutionary ideal of equality and fraternity. Levada’s surveys revealed the existence of homo sovieticus, a fearful, isolated, authority-loving personality created by Communism. But in the early 1990s this type of individual seemed to be disappearing, and Gudkov was hopeful that it was just a passing historical interlude. The number of respondents, for example, who thought that homosexuals should be “liquidated” began to drop. But, then, to his horror, the numbers began to rise again in the 1990s; under Putin it became clear that most Russians were not craving freedom or converging with their counterparts in the West; homo sovieticus was alive and well. In 2016 the justice ministry classified the Levada Center as a “foreign agent.” As a means to combat that trend, propaganda placed a new emphasis on the female's role as the perpetuator of the Communist regime in their ability to produce the next class of healthy workers, a policy called pronatalism. Propaganda presented pronatalism, a means to encourage women to bear children, in different ways to urban working-class women and to rural peasant women. Propaganda designed for an urban audience linked healthy female sexuality with reproduction while medical information to peasant women positioned conception as the purpose of sexual intercourse. [24]

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] For example, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1924 in Literature and Revolution about the "Communist man", "man of the future": [4]

Join us after the film for a panel discussion about this phenomenon and its repercussions on contemporary geopolitics. Filmmakers Ivo Briedis and Rita Ruduša will be joined by Craig Kennedy, from the Harvard University’s Davis Center of Russian and Eurasian Studies, and filmmaker Darya Zhuk. Moderated by Daris Dēliņš. When the Communist regime collapsed in 1991 there was an expectation, both in the West and in Russia, that the country would embrace Western values and join the civilised world. It took no account of a ruined economy, depleted and exhausted human capital and the mental and moral dent made by 70 years of Soviet rule. Nobody knew what kind of country would succeed the Soviet Union, or what being Russian really meant. The removal of ideological and geographical constraints did not add moral clarity.Steiner, Evgeny. Avant-garde and Construction of the New Man (Штейнер Е.С. Авангард и построение Нового Человека). Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2002. (The English version of this book was published under the title Stories for Little Comrades. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1999). a b Barbara Evans Clements, Daughters of the Revolution: A History of Women in the U.S.S.R. (Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1994), 73. Nie ma tajemnic, których by nie wyjasnil. Nie ma problemów, których by nie rozwiazal. Jest naiwny i prosty. Jest pusty. Jest wszechwiedny i wszechobecny. Jest przepelniony madroscia. Jest czasteczka wszechswiata noszacego w sobie caly wszechswiat. Jest gotów na wszystko i do wszystkiego. Jest nawet gotów na lepsze. Oczekuje na lepsze, choc w nie nie wierzy. Ma nadzieje na gorsze. Jest Niczym czyli Wszystkim. Jest Bogiem udajacym Diabla. Jest Diablem udajacym Boga. Tkwi w kazdym czlowieku.” (Zinoviev, 1984) According to research carried out by Yuri Levada and his team (including Lev Gudkov) in 1989-2003, an oppressive socioeconomic environment resulted in generations of mistrustful and cynical citizens, largely dependent on the overbearing care of the State; normalizing doing the bare minimum at work and stealing from the workplace; developing a self-destructive drinking habit; avoiding taking personal responsibility and demonstrating a generally low level of ambition.

In a number of his works, Levada described the negative personal qualities inherent in the Soviet man and, summing up many years of research, expressed confidence that the Soviet man as a type of personality did not disappear with the collapse of the USSR, but continues to exist in modern Russia and be reproduced in new generations. Moreover, according to the scientist, cynicism and an increase in the level of aggression were added to such negative features as social hypocrisy, paternalism, suspicion and isolationism. According to Levada, these negative changes were again the result of restrictions on public freedoms, as well as distorted economic and moral incentives introduced by the new Russian authorities. As one of the surveys of the study showed, by 2004, the number of people who believe that Russians are no different from residents of other countries has significantly decreased and the number of those who consider Russia a "besieged fortress" surrounded by enemies has increased. [15] 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. Proletarian Internationalism in Action? Communist Legacies and Attitudes Towards Migrants in Russia. Since the late 1980s, there have been quite a few ethical dilemmas in the air, like who to hold responsible for the various crimes committed by the Soviet regime. Public calls for collective repentance went unanswered during Perestroika or the 1990s and basically sank in the information noise, failing to reach the masses. Lev Gudkov explained Russia's inability to do historical homework by referring to the relatively late abolishment of serfdom in Russia in 1861. This was followed by several revolutions, world wars and the Soviet regime which corrupted both the concept of morality and collective responsibility.

Ethics The Code of Ethics lays down the fundamental principles of the professional ethics and conduct of the authority's staff. Ji pabrėžia, kad su ekspozicija turėtų susipažinti ir jaunoji karta, kuri apie tą laikotarpį beveik nieko nežino. The country was tired of ideology, and he did not force it. All he promised (and largely delivered) was to raise incomes; to restore Soviet-era stability and a sense of worth; to provide more consumer goods; and to let people travel. Since these things satisfied most of the demands for “Freedom” that had been heard from the late 1980s onwards, the people happily agreed to his request that they should stay out of politics. Though Mr Putin was an authoritarian, he seemed “democratic” to them. For a final note, here is a citation from Mark Zakharov's film "To kill a Dragon" (1988) based on the play of Yevgeny Schwartz: "What are you? … You are free people! Get up! You are slaves! /…/ I will now make everyone understand this and kill the Dragon in themselves! IN YOURSELF, do you understand that?" Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.