See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/353731664

Homo Sovieticus: A sarcastic or a genuine depiction of the Russian character?

Preprint · May 2021

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20694.16963

CITATIONS READS

0 493

1 author:

Aggeliki Karavournioti
Umeå University
6 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Forensic Linguistics View project

The Absurd of Human Life and the Human named Sisyphus View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Aggeliki Karavournioti on 06 August 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

1

Homo Sovieticus: A
sarcastic or a genuine
depiction of the Russian
character?

1
Image by Evgeny Tonkonogy taken from https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/10/13/the-evolution-of-
homo-sovieticus-to-putins-man-a59189, accessed 04-05-2021.
 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Homo Sovieticus is an ambiguous term used to portray the Soviet character, baptized in
the holy waters of a revolution, the Soviet Communist revolution. It relates both to the
birth of the Soviet Union and the domination of the Soviet Communistic party. It is
frequently employed either with its positive or its negative connotation, as a concept
that carries a great honor for the Soviet people, or a sarcastic mood, or possibly a
hushed nostalgia in the Russian soul.
Keywords: Soviet Union, new Soviet Man, Communist Party, Homo Sovieticus

Aggeliki Karavournioti, Researcher in Social Sciences and Humanities

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4590-4826

NOTE: All my articles have been registered in the Swedish University bibliographic
database and have been reviewed by the Urkund University anti plagiarism tool. It is
therefore useless, apart from being a crime, for someone to steal them and sell them as their
own in various websites.
You can use my articles as a source, mentioning my name, but not owning them. This
is not only immoral but also a crime. Use your time writing something of your own, only then
you will feel real satisfaction. SAY NO TO PLAGIARISM, SAY NO TO ILLEGAL
TRANSACTIONS OF UNIVERSITY PAPERS.
 2

The term Homo Sovieticus refers to the average man and woman inhabitants of the
Soviet Union but also of the other countries of the Eastern Soviet Bloc. Even if the
sociologist Aleksandr Zinoviev claims the title of analytically introducing in the
literature Homo Sovieticus in 1986, certainly the term carries a broader historical
background. According to Maja Soboleva, Zinoviev was not the inventor of the term. It
was first introduced in 1962 by Joseph Novak and after Zinoviev, it was also used in
1992 by Józef Tischner.2
Mikhail Geller pinpoints that twelve years prior to Zinoviev in the book the Soviet
People published by Politizdat, a new type of human that excels Homo Sapiens is
introduced, Homo Sovieticus.3 This was the man that according to Leonid Brezhnev
represented the “most significant achievement of the last sixty years.”4
However, an ideal Soviet society could have never been inhabited by common people.
Similarly, to the Soviet society, the new Soviet man must have been a unique specimen
of a human with particular qualities that despite how diverse the Soviet Union was in
an ethnic, linguistic, or cultural manner, they were predominant qualities that fostered
an archetypical form of Soviet man, a Soviet nation.
The principal leaders of the October Revolution, and the Communist Party, first Lenin
and then Stalin vigorously supported the creation of a new Soviet man. In 1924, Leon
Trotsky vividly depicts the “Soviet man of the future, the Communist man,”5 who
would not abstain that notably from a superman, both mentally and physically. Later
on, the second secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Suslov firmly renewed the
importance of the new Soviet man by declaring that “the formation of the New Man is
the most important component of the entire task of Communist construction.”6
Consequently, the conceptualization, birth, evolution, and passing away of Homo
Sovieticus is tightly linked to the Soviet Communist Party, and the existence of the
Soviet Union, which by its dismantling in the 1990s, gave birth to another unique

2
Joseph Novak’s book (1962), Homo sovieticus, der Mensch unter Hammer und Sichel, Józef Tischner’s book
(1992), The Ethics of Solidarity and Homo Sovieticus. In Soboleva, M. (2017). The concept of the “New Soviet
Man” and its short history. Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 51(1), 64-85. p.65.
3
Geller, M. (1988). Cogs in the Soviet wheel: The formation of Soviet man. Collins Harvill. p.27.
4
Pravda, 25 February 1986.
5
Trotsky L, (1924). Literature and Revolution, chapter 8.
6
Geller, M. (1988). Cogs in the Soviet wheel: The formation of Soviet man. Collins Harvill. p.43.
 3

specimen of a human, the Homo post-Sovieticus; but this is probably a topic for
another essay. In the meantime, scholars such as Aleksandr Zinoviev openly
reprimanded the not-so utopic Soviet socialistic environment with the not-so-perfect
new Soviet men. Hence, I will now present this man’s primary characteristics, briefly
after I clarify the ambiguous depiction of Homo Sovieticus that seems to combine a
completely different set of qualities.

What you see depends on which side of the History’s table you sit. Under this aspect,
the controversial depiction of the Homo Sovieticus could be somehow justified. On the
one hand, the new Soviet man serves the most suited version of a human being,
furnished with a set of unique genes and qualities that command the human existence
and identify Homo Sovieticus as superior to Homo Sapiens, due to a higher physical,
intellectual, and mental capacity. This is the standpoint of the Soviet Communist Party
and millions of people that remained, through time, committed to the Communist ideals
and values. In a way, this depiction of Homo Sovieticus represents the Soviet socialistic
dream that was sold in a virtual land of utopia to all the people that longed to buy it.
On the other hand, Homo Sovieticus is the degenerate, and failed outcome of the Soviet
dream, or else of the Soviet experiment. In this side of the History’s table, the new
Soviet man represents a caricature of a human being that accumulates numerous
disadvantages, major weak points, critical issues of embarrassment, various reasons for
ridicule, and uncountable failures. This is the Homo Sovieticus as depicted by all those
people that woke up from the Communist dream, or maybe they had never fallen into it
and in some point started to criticize and highlight every single grey area in the fixed
narration of the Soviet utopian script.
Finally, there is a third point of view to be considered. All these people that in the
beginning of the Communist revolution were drawn to the idea of molding a new
superior man, the Soviet man, in a new and greater Soviet socialistic society. However,
somewhere along the way, their hopes were refuted, and they became aware of the
futility, and the vanity of the entire project; but still, they kept within them a secret,
silent hope that was faintly fueled by a deadlock Romanticism. Under this view, Homo
Sovieticus sprang as a promising, and ambitious project that at some point got out of
track, but still numerous fragments remained, as a pleasant memory that people don’t
wish to erase. As Svetlana Alexievich describes it “Memories are living creatures.
 4

People put their entire lives into their memories: what they read, what they thought
about, whether they were happy or not.”7

The Communist ideology suggested a new type of human that would own a personality
worthy to be living in a world ruled by socialistic values. Marx addressed the
individual, not in terms of benevolence, pity, or care of the weak, poor and powerless
but rather in terms of companionship to the revolutionary, working man, whose fate
was associated to the fate of the socialistic society he lived in.8
In his turn, Lenin, not only pinpointed the linkage between the revolution, and the
establishment of Communism with the overall development of the working-class man,
the proletarian, but he also stressed another crucial matter, the matter of proletarian
education. Lenin supported the idea of educating a new type of human, with intense
political and polytechnical education, inspired by firm communist morality that would
provide the individuals all necessary qualities to serve the Party.9 More or less, Lenin
believed and promoted the kind of education that would create a new human, the Soviet
human that would by all means, and strength live his life to serving the greatness of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin’s followers supported their leader’s vision regarding political education and the
formulation of the new man. Lunacharsky, Krupsakaya, Kalinin portrayed the new
man, who was a collective product, a product that framed the new Soviet individual.
Trotsky defined this new type of Soviet human as a revolutionary fighter that would
carry on all the ideals and the values of the great communist revolution. Kalinin spoke
of political fighters, and working people, totally devoted to hating to death the
“bourgeois life” and defend even with their own lives the domination of the
proletariat.10 Bogdanov emphasized that the new proletarian man would be a fusion of
collectivism and rationality employing the skills he held to preserve all the social
structures required to enforce the social progress, and evolution of the proletariat.
However, the New Socialist man that Bogdanov represented would occur freely and
rationally as a complement of a socialistic society; therefore, he refrained from the real

7
Alexievich, S. (2018). In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul. Cornell
University Press. p.9.
8
Smirnov, G. L. (1973). Soviet Man: The Making of a Socialist Type of Personality. [Transl. from the Russian
by Robert Daglish]. Progress Publishers. pp.15-16.
9
Ibid, pp.17-18.
10
Soboleva, M. (2017). The concept of the “New Soviet Man” and its short history. Canadian-American Slavic
Studies, 51(1), 64-85. pp.72-73.
 5

“Soviet Man” that was the violent outcome of the centralized communist system, due to
the rashness and the demand for the highest possible uniformity of the Soviet society.11
In 1928, a comprehensive debate was carried by Komsomolskaya Pravda to build the
profile of the new Soviet man that would represent and uphold the values of Socialism.
Homo Sovieticus was by then classified as a man dedicated to Communist ideals. He
was a champion of internationalism and collectivism. He was compelled to utilize all
the means to be strong, skillful, healthy, to be eager to die for the welfare of the
socialistic society, for the welfare of the generations to come.12
Stalin did not deviate from Lenin’s ideas regarding the production of Homo Sovieticus.
On the contrary, it was by his leadership confirmed that the birth and the evolution of
the Soviet man was inextricably associated to the fate of Socialism in the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s, the term Soviet man was formally launched by the Party and the mass
media propaganda and formed another word in the vocabulary of the ordinary Russian
language. Even more, it evolved to a term linked to the financial and political progress
of the Soviet Union. Homo Sovieticus was designed to fit as a well-tempered cogwheel
of the State machine.13
Sharafutdinova highlights the principal characteristics of the new Soviet man as a part,
and a servant of the State. “This new species—an idealized Soviet person—was
expected to love work and his/her motherland, have a high sense of public duty,
sacrifice individual desires for the benefit of the collective, be fearless, intolerant
towards the enemies of communism, loyal to the state, and devoted to the cause of
building communism. The Soviet person was also supposed to be morally pure,
truthful, and humble.”14
In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech at the Twenty-Second Communist Party
Congress recognized as a historical reality the people of various nationalities that
constituted the USSR, the Soviet people, that shared a set of common features. The
Soviet people were a “new historical, social, and international community of people
with a common territory, economy, and socialist content; a culture that reflected the
particularities of multiple nationalities; a federal state; and possessing a common
ultimate goal: the construction of communism.”15

11
Ibid., pp.70, 78-79.
12
Ibid., pp.73-74.
13
Ibid., pp.74-76.
14
Sharafutdinova, G. (2019). Was There a “Simple Soviet” Person? Debating the Politics and Sociology of
“Homo Sovieticus”. Slavic Review, 78(1), 173-195. p. 173.
15
Soboleva, M. (2017). The concept of the “New Soviet Man” and its short history. Canadian-American Slavic
Studies, 51(1), 64-85. p.79.
 6

In the late 1980s, Juri Levada began a research labeled “the Soviet simple person.”
Through time, he studied and depicted the set of features that constituted the character
of the human being that was born and raised in the Soviet Union. Levada’s conclusions
were at the very least intriguing, producing both agreement and criticism. According to
his study, “the Soviet man was a) simple and simplified (in a sense of being obedient to
authorities, modest and satisfied with what he/she has, living as ‘everyone does,’ not
trying to stick out, not trying to be different from others), (b) isolated, (c) lacking
choice, (d) mobilized, (e) hostage to the group, and (f) hierarchical.”16
Levada approached Homo Sovieticus as a complex model that incorporated in his being
multiple features that stemmed from the correlation of the social system and mass
production. Homo Sovieticus had the perception that he was unique and extraordinary,
superior in comparison to others. His association to the State was essential, as there was
formed a relationship of father-child between them. Homo Sovieticus, was the
obedient, and respectful child, whereas the State acted like the austere, sometimes
cruel, but caring father. This link of mutual dependence nurtured the inability of the
individual to become an adult and the frustration of the State to cope with the “child’s”
growing reality of overreliance.17
Levada highlights the most distinctive features that portray Homo Sovieticus as bound
to a fixed self-isolation, paternalized by the State, commanded by a syndrome of
imperialism, determined that he was under the authority of a confining system with no
meaningful personal control over his actions. He was a man of the mass, renouncing
eliteness and uniqueness, easy to control, created once and for all, with no possible
modifications.18 Finally, an interesting illustration of Homo Sovieticus is offered by the
Russian writer, and pioneer of Social Realism, Maxim Gorky. Following Nietzsche and
his depiction of the man as Superman, Gorky manifests the Soviet Man, with a capital
M that he is “Free from the burden of self-consciousness inculcated through past
exploitation and deprivation, the contemporary hero — ‘man of the new humanity’— is
‘big, daring, strong.’ He pits the force of human will against the forces of nature in a
‘grandiose and tragic’ struggle. His mission is not only to understand the world but also
to master it.”19

16
Sharafutdinova, G. (2019). Was There a “Simple Soviet” Person? Debating the Politics and Sociology of
“Homo Sovieticus”. Slavic Review, 78(1), 173-195. p. 178.
17
Gudkov, L. D. (2008). “Soviet Man” in the Sociology of Iurii Levada. Sociological Research, 47(6), 6-28.
pp.15-16.
18
Ibid., pp.15-17.
19
Fitzpatrick, S. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s.
Oxford University Press, USA. p.71.
 7

Possibly Alexander Zinoviev presented us with the most thorough description and
simultaneously intense criticism of the ruling Soviet Communist Party, the Soviet man,
and the bond between them. In his satirical representation, Homo Sovieticus is adjusted
to live under adverse conditions and constantly preparing himself for even worse. He is
infamous for his compliance to any command by the authorities, whereas he despises
anyone that dares to defy the dominant social norms.20 Zinoviev presents Homo
Sovieticus away from his mighty Soviet fortress, portraying him as an alien, a
claustrophobic human being that is “afraid of everybody and everything, hating
everybody and everything, and firmly convinced that it is precisely because he is afraid
of everybody and hates them that he is a ‘superman.’”21
Zinoviev’s portrayal is powerful and engaging, as he decides to describe the entire
picture in which Soviet people live their lives like “frightened children scared to leave
the darkroom in which they have been shut because they are convinced that they can’t
live anywhere else. Their darkroom is crammed full of weapons, and that makes them
even more scared. Their only consolation is the other occupants of that same darkroom
and the guards. The paralyzing effect of fear has given birth to one of the most
important qualities of Soviet man - the firm conviction, a mystical belief, that nothing
must be changed, that the system will continue to exist forever, and that, as Zinoviev
asserts, it is the fate of all humanity.”22
Maya Ganina points to the culture of Homo Sovieticus that consists of his key features:
“bribery, thievery, lies, denigration of the powerless, subservience to those in power.”23

20
Geller, M. (1988). Cogs in the Soviet wheel: The formation of Soviet man. Collins Harvill. pp. 47-48.
21
Ibid., p.136.
22
Ibid., pp.136-137.
23
Govorukhin, S., Ganina, M., Lavrov, K., & Dudintsev, V. (1989). Homo Sovieticus. World Affairs, 152(2),
104-108. p.104.
 8

Ganina does not mince her words about the Soviet man that is unaware of ideals such
as “conscience, duty, charity, decency, and dignity.”24 And how could he, since,
according to Ganina, “to act on these ideas one has to have pride, one has to feel
oneself as Somebody- precisely the traits that, after seventy years of lies and terror, the
Soviet people so sorely lack.”25
Lev Gudkov carried on Levada’s project of analyzing Homo Sovieticus. He pinpoints
that the Soviet man exists only within the State, and only in accordance to it. In return,
the State rewards and controls him, as a father, and as a guard, giving no room for
individuality or free will. However, the Soviet man knows that in some point the State
would disappoint and betray him, after exploiting him to the core and leaving him with
the very least for his survival. And because of this knowledge, Homo Sovieticus
reflexively resists defending himself by “avoiding the demands of the regime (he does
sloppy work, indulges in petty theft, ‘skips out on’ his various obligations). The only
things he actually cares about are those that are essential for his own and his family’s
well-being, and so on.”26 Gudkov castigates the “insanity of Russian society...the moral
impotence of Russian society that creates conditions for the reproduction of repressive
institutions, as well as the man himself: ‘vengeful and aggressive, insulted, envious,
cunning and flexible.’”27
The Polish sociologist Piotr Sztompka formulated the term “civilizational
incompetence” to define Homo Sovieticus. The Soviet regime constructed for its
citizens an environment of paralysis in multiple fields of social, everyday life, such as
“entrepreneurship, citizenship, sovereignty, and the everyday virtues of civility and life
comforts.”28 In a way, Soviet people lived as if they were institutionalized, without
even know it, solely enduring it as if it was normal. Sztompka’s view was supported by
another Polish thinker, Józef Tischner, who advocating that “the totalitarian system also
left an indelible imprint on Polish society in the form of ‘spiritual enslavement’ and
individual incapacity to take responsibility for life’s decisions.”29

24 25
Ibid., p.104.
26
Gudkov, L. D. (2008). “Soviet Man” in the Sociology of Iurii Levada. Sociological Research, 47(6), 6-28.
p.17.
27
Sharafutdinova, G. (2019). Was There a “Simple Soviet” Person? Debating the Politics and Sociology of
“Homo Sovieticus”. Slavic Review, 78(1), 173-195. p.189.
28
Ibid., p.177.
29
Ibid., p.178.
 9

The writer Vladimir Sorokin, speaking on behalf of the Russian intelligentsia, marks an
existing complex of inferiority that stems from the Soviet past. This Soviet past
produced Homo Sovieticus, a supposedly damaged person of the Soviet system; a
human being unable to evolve, to adjust to the present, to adapt in the modern modes of
the Western civilization, to embrace new, liberal ideas. This inferiority complex more
or less functions as a scapegoat for all the adversities of the present.30
Last but not least, in 2011 another Russian writer, Olga Sedakova pinpointed the
criticism cast upon Homo Sovieticus by the Russian intellects, agreeing with Juri
Levada and his remarks about the Soviet man that involved “doublethink, flexibility,
simplicity, cynicism, and lack of self-respect.”31 In the same wavelength, the Russian
historian, Juri Pivovarov blamed the Soviet system as liable for producing “diminished
quality of human beings.”32

“We shall be unable to restructure our life without lowering our feelings’ of threshold
pain. Conscience is the most neglected area of human relations in our country,”33 Albert
Likhanov utters whereas Stanislav Govorukhin states that the seventy years of
Bolshevism were responsible for a “deliberate and thorough destruction of the best
genetic stock in the country... The sick cells devoured the healthy... The main crime of
Stalinism... Homo Sovieticus was infected at birth with the ‘virus of treachery’ and
‘mistrust’ and had ‘fear instilled’ in his brain.”34
Surely, it is nearly impossible to position the aforementioned remarks in the category of
positively describing Homo Sovieticus. However, it is also challenging to perceive
them as an exclusively negative depiction. Probably because, apart from harsh, they
sound as painful, and desperate words to describe the fate of so many people that were
born, raised or even died within the borders of the former Soviet Union. For them,
Homo Sovieticus was not merely a project, an experiment to produce the Soviet

30
Ibid., p174.
31 32
Ibid., p.189.
33 34
Govorukhin, S., Ganina, M., Lavrov, K., & Dudintsev, V. (1989). Homo Sovieticus. World Affairs, 152(2),
104-108. p.104.
 10

superman, or the Soviet frightened human being. It was also the steering wheel of their
dreams, and hopes regarding the fulfilment of a better world, a better life that the Soviet
Communistic party and regime promised them. Therefore, they became the willing “lab
rats,” driven by the longing for the Soviet utopia.
In the 1994 findings of the project “the Soviet simple person” in the question of how
they identify themselves, Juri Levada states that 35% of the Russian people answered
that they always feel Soviet people, while 23% answered that they feel Soviet in some
instances. 35 However, these were the answers soon after the dismantling of the Soviet
Union and one could argue that they are easily justified by the shock of the separation
that people experienced over a past, they have just bidden farewell. In a more recent
survey in 2020, entitled “Historical memory,” in the question “do you regret the
collapse of the USSR?” 65% of the Russian people reply positively.36 In a second
survey in 2020, under the title “Memory and Pride” in the question “what are you
ashamed of?” almost half of the respondents (49%) answer the collapse of the USSR,37
whereas in another survey in 2019, called “National Identity and Pride” in the same
question, 45% once again reply that they feel ashamed of the collapse of the USSR.38
People cannot avoid the past, since it is an integral part of their lives, their personal and
collective history. However, it is virtually impossible to return with nostalgia in a past
that is utterly awful. It must have been something in this past that is recognized as
memorable, valuable, and worthy for so many people to hold on to it, to reminisce
about it. This path, the path of the human memories was followed by Natalya Kozlova,
to speak of and describe the Soviet past and the story of Homo Sovieticus.
In contrast to the outside-in approach of Levada, Kozlova chose an inside-in
approximation, whereas she also declared that in her study she would not be an
impartial observer, as Levada stated for himself, but a co-participant, both an observer
and a test subject.39 Kozlova describes the method of her research as “reading human
documents... various writings by Soviet citizens collected and stored in the ‘peoples’
archive’ (narodny arkhiv). These ‘peoples’ documents represented individual
reflections of social relationships revealed through the everyday practices referred to in

35
Levada, I. (1996). “Homo Sovieticus” Five Years Later: 1989-1994. Sociological Research, 35(1), 6-19. p.12.
36
Historical Memory (29.06.2020), taken from, https://www.levada.ru/en/2020/06/29/historical-memory/,
accessed 12-05-2021.
37
Memory and Pride (05.11.2020), taken from https://www.levada.ru/en/2020/11/05/memory-and-pride/,
accessed 12-05-2021.
38
National Identity and Pride (25.01.2019), taken from https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/01/25/national-identity-
and-pride/, accessed 12-05-2021.
39
Sharafutdinova, G. (2019). Was There a “Simple Soviet” Person? Debating the Politics and Sociology of
“Homo Sovieticus”. Slavic Review, 78(1), 173-195. p.184.
 11

these sources. They ‘carried rich information about the social games played during the
Soviet and the post-Soviet periods.’”40
Kozlova studied the story of Homo Sovieticus, and the story of the Soviet Union,
through the writings of the Soviet people. Documents such as letters, postcards,
personal journals; vivid everyday life snapshots of the common Soviet people; so
simple but at the same time so poetic. In this way, she gained access to the most
“intimate worlds and relationships within families, networks of friends, and relatives,
as they lived, worked, traveled, got married, raised kids, interacted with the
government, and procured food, clothes, and other necessities.”41 Kozlova became a
companion and an observer of other peoples’ most trivial and important moments,
“their worries, successes and failures, and everyday social practices,”42 all those things
that can become a happy memory but it is also so easy to be forgotten if no one holds
on to them.
Following Kozlova, Alexei Yurchak explores Homo Sovieticus, without casting the
stigma on him. On the contrary, he pinpoints the fact that even under a harsh, almost
unbearable regime, the human creativity found room to flourish, and produce notable
fragments of culture. Yurchak marks his “appreciation of ordinary Soviet citizens,
some living in ‘de-territorialized spaces,’ creating new meanings, and living alternative
lifestyles.”43
And last but not least, Svetlana Alexievich writes about the Bolshevikian Homo
Sovieticus in a similar manner as Kozlova. She approaches the individuals, the ordinary
Soviet people, she listens for their words, their stories, and then she writes them down
to save them, to save the people that uttered these words, that lived these stories, and
then all these became their life. As she states, she is interested in “domestic socialism,
not heroic, pompous, public displays, but the socialism that lives in human souls.”44 For
her, Homo Sovieticus is both grand, and small, frightened and superhero, struggling
within his human dimensions, wondering “why is it that our suffering doesn’t convert
into freedom?”45

40
Ibid., p.183.
41 42
Ibid., p.184.
43
Ibid., p.187.
44
Alexievich, S. (2018). In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul. Cornell
University Press.
45
Ibid., p.18.
 12

Homo Sovieticus as a term is a scholarly formation associated with various authors.

However, as an idea, the conception of Homo Sovieticus began to mold right after the
outburst of the October Revolution, the structure and domination of the Soviet
Communist Party, and the creation of a novel and ambitious socialistic state called the
Soviet Union. Moreover, anyone that restricts the context of Homo Sovieticus as either
positive or negative, merely misses a great deal of the personal and the collective
history of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet people.
On one hand, the term Homo Sovieticus was classified by the birth, rise, evolution, and
dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Communism. It was formed
to match the greatness of a superpower because a mighty state cannot be inhabited by
common people, but by exceptional ones.
On the other hand, been Homo Sovieticus was not solely praise, a personal, honorary
badge in the daily reality of the Soviet people; it was also a burden, a heavy cross
almost unbearable to carry under the weight of multiple adversities. Therefore, the
individuals strived to invent ways to ease the burden, to soothe the pain that the label of
the superman- Homo Sovieticus cast upon their character, their present, their future,
and above all, upon their lives.
But even under this lens, Homo Sovieticus is not fully investigated. Even if one
acknowledges it, as both negative and positive, genuine, and sarcastic portrayal of the
Soviet personality, still something is missing. Maybe the nostalgia of the Soviet people
for a past, somehow painful and unbearable, somehow promising, and utopic, but still
their past, to hang on to it because of its abundance of all the moments, the faces, the
feelings, the failures, the achievements, the memories that make life worthwhile.
 13

Alexievich, S. (2018). In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-
Soviet Soul. Cornell University Press
Campbell, J. C., & Zinoviev, A. (1984). The Reality of Communism. Foreign Affairs,
63(1), 201
Fitzpatrick, S. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: ordinary life in extraordinary times:
Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford University Press, USA
Geller, M. (1988). Cogs in the Soviet wheel: The formation of Soviet man. Collins
Harvill
Govorukhin, S., Ganina, M., Lavrov, K., & Dudintsev, V. (1989). Homo Sovieticus.
World Affairs, 152(2), 104-108
Gudkov, L. D. (2008). “Soviet Man” in the Sociology of Iurii Levada. Sociological
Research, 47(6), 6-28
Levada, I. (1996). “Homo Sovieticus” Five Years Later: 1989-1994. Sociological
Research, 35(1), 6-19
Sharafutdinova, G. (2019). Was There a “Simple Soviet” Person? Debating the
Politics and Sociology of “Homo Sovieticus”. Slavic Review, 78(1), 173-195
Smirnov, G. L. (1973). Soviet Man: The Making of a Socialist Type of Personality.
[Transl. from the Russian by Robert Daglish]. Progress Publishers
Soboleva, M. (2017). The concept of the “New Soviet Man” and its short history.
Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 51(1), 64-85
Trotsky L, (1924). Literature and Revolution
Zinoviev, A. (1980). The Reality of Communism (Gollancz, London, 1984) and Mark
Popovsky, Science in Chains

https://cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/homo-sovieticus
https://www.levada.ru/en/2020/06/29/historical-memory/
https://www.levada.ru/en/2020/11/05/memory-and-pride/
https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/01/25/national-identity-and-pride/
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/10/13/the-evolution-of-homo-sovieticus-to-putins-man-
a59189
 14

46

We weren’t just slaves, we were slavery’s romantics

Мы были не просто рабы, а романтики рабства 47
СВЕТЛАНА АЛЕКСИЕВИЧ

46
Image by Sergei Tunin taken from https://cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/homo-sovieticus, accessed 04-05-
2021.
47
Alexievich, S. (2018). In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul. Cornell
University Press, pp. 8, 26.

View publication stats