Homo Sovieticus

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In the 1920s and into the Stalinist era the concept of the "New Soviet Woman" served alongside that of the "New Soviet Man." Her roles were vastly different from those of her male counterpart; she was burdened with a complex identity that changed with ideology shifts in the party doctrine toward more conservative notions of the role of the family and the mother in the Soviet system. The New Soviet Woman was a Superwoman who balanced competing responsibilities and took on the burden of multiple roles: Communist citizen, full-time worker, wife and mother. [19] 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. Homo Sovieticus и крах советской империи: неприятные социальные диагнозы Левады" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-08-05 . Retrieved 2014-10-22. Michel Heller asserted that the term was coined in the introduction of a 1974 monograph "Sovetskye lyudi" ("Soviet People") to describe the next level of evolution of humanity, where the USSR becomes the "kingdom of freedom", the birthplace of "a new, higher type of Homo sapiens - Homo sovieticus". [2] 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.

The contemporary American and Russian sociologist and social anthropologist Alexei Yurchak believe that the constant reference to the expression Homo sovieticus in Western academic and publicist discourse manifested assumptions that socialism was "bad", "amoral" or "imposed", expressing ideas about the existence of socialism as such in the Soviet Union and, accordingly, about the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union. [18] Communist ideology was based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, mixed with ideas of the rational progression of history developed by Hegel and vulgarized nineteenth century science. Its emotional and didactic component was so strong that they changed all proportions. All aspects of live, and for certain also the humanities got connected with the natural sciences and this logical vision of historical progress. Thanks to the excellent means of vulgarization unprepared people were taught to reason. School, theater, film, painting, literature, press and political meetings all shaped their thinking. Herschel and Edith Alt, The New Soviet Man. His Upbringing and Character Development, New York: Bookman Associates, Inc., 1964 (from a review: "The aim of the Alts' study was to portray the impact upon the character of the individual of the entire Soviet system, of which child rearing and education are a part.")

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MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide. Some readers would be surprised to find out that there are some Putin lovers and admirers of his imperial politics among Estonians too (take a look at the Neeme Lall YouTube channel if you have some Estonian or Russian). Most of us would find such people and their behavior crazy or eccentric so they are not usually taken seriously. Nevertheless, it would be an interesting subject to explore in the future. Kheveshi M. An Explanatory Dictionary of the Ideological and Political Terms of the Soviet Period (Хевеши М.А. Толковый словарь идеологических и политических терминов советского периода.) Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya (2002) ISBN 5-7133-1147-3 (in Russian) Geller, Mikhail (1988). Cogs in the wheel: the formation of Soviet man. New York: Knopf. ISBN 9780394569260.

Yurchak, Alexei (2003). "Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 45 (3): 480–510. doi: 10.1017/S0010417503000239. ISSN 0010-4175. JSTOR 3879459. S2CID 197659886. Homo sovieticus jest on tak niewolnik, który po wyzwoleniu w jednej niewoli czym predzej szuka sobie drugiej, gdyz buntuja sie przeciw komunizmowi, wielu przyjelo logike manichejska.” (Tischner, 1992) According to the Russian scholar-educator Nikolay Nikandrov, the expression Homo sovieticus is an insulting name invented by the critics of Soviet power for the "new man" mentioned as part of the new anthropological construct whose development was declared in the Soviet Union ("Soviet people"). [17]

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Lynne Atwood. Creating the New Soviet Woman, Women's Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity, 1922-53. Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1999 (from Springer Link: “This book explores the Soviet attempt to propagandise the 'new Soviet woman' through the magazines Rabotnitsa and Krest'yanka from the 1920s to the end of the Stalin era. Balancing work and family did not prove easy in a climate of shifting economic and demographic priorities, and the book charts the periodic changes made to the model.”) Cala dzialalnosc rozumu naukowego poddac pod wladze rozumu politycznego, uformowanego przez ideologie komunizmu.” (Tischner, 1992). Thereby communist ideology eliminated all spontaneous, independent thought processes in an attempt to impose artificial controls on reality. The base of socialism was an unwritten contract; the citizen was not expected to interfere in public life, the State would guarantee a problem free life, neither poor nor rich. To this end, the State would tolerate almost everything; a poor work ethic (competition was completely squeezed because all suprus was immediately taken by the state), petty theft of communal property, irresponsible and inconsiderate behavior toward nature etc. The homo sovieticus became demoralized.

The totalitarian and authoritarian delusion of wholeness, where history and every part of live was explained by the law of progression, sounded as a very attractive offer, it was considered to be the big new perspective. It however soon became fixed as a doctrine. The ideology of dialectial materialism was used to explain all social facts. All human beings were obliged to think in the same terms. Free autonomous thinking was not allowed. People ’s minds became captive. 2.1 The functioning of an ideology. 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. Pronatalist policies encouraging women to have many children were justified by the selfishness inherent in limiting the next generation of "new men." [18] New Soviet Woman [ edit ] "What the October Revolution gave to the female worker and peasant". 1920 Soviet propaganda poster. The inscriptions on the buildings read "library", "kindergarten", "school for grown-ups", etc.Joseph Stalin's policies on women were more conservative than that of his predecessor Lenin. Because he was concerned with a declining population rate, Stalin de-emphasized the Marxist feminist view of women in society, which, in his view, freed women from patriarchy and capitalism. In keeping with the party line, Stalin reasserted the importance of women in the workforce and female education, primarily literacy, although he began to emphasize the role of mother in a way that differed from more radical notions of the early 1920s. [22] Economically the peculiar system of equality and social justice where everyone is entitled to the same amount of goods regardless of individual contribution demolished all initiative to make profit. Competition and individual achievements were not stimulated or allowed.

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. In their articles and lectures , the well-known sociologist Yuri Levada and members of his group Levada Center attributed the following to the typical negative features of Homo soveticus: [13] [14] [15] By March 2014, when ‘little green men’ wearing unmarked uniforms appeared on the island of Crimea, apathy had given way to euphoria. The Red Mirror is focused on ‘high Putinism’—the enormous esteem the president enjoyed in the wake of the annexation, when his approval rating regularly exceeded 80 per cent. It fell to pre-Crimea levels of 65–70 per cent after the announcement of the highly unpopular pension reform in June 2018, which raised the retirement age by five years for men and eight for women, but has held relatively steady ever since. Like some liberal American writers who have made forays into Trump country, Sharafutdinova says that her study is motivated by a ‘personal urge’ to understand why many of her friends and family in Russia take a positive view of Putin. She does not accept that their perceptions stem from ‘brainwashing and propaganda’, ‘cultural preferences for a strong hand’, or ‘moral bankruptcy and the inability of Russian people to distinguish right from wrong’, as the Homo Sovieticus paradigm would suggest. 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.

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. Bridges, David (1997). Education, Autonomy, and Democratic Citizenship: Philosophy in a Changing World. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-15334-8. 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)