The Myth of homo soveticus: Perspectives from Russian and Foreign Scholars

Abstract

The subject of this article is the study of the phenomenon homo soveticus in the West (C. Friedrich, Z. Brzezinski, S. Fitzpatrick, S. Kotkin, A. Yurchak and others) and in Russia by sociologist Yuri Levada since the 1980s; by social anthropologist Natalia Kozlova in the late 1990s, and from the early 2000s to the present by historians and literary scholars from Russian cities (Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Tiumen, Krasnodar, Moscow) and from Hungary and Poland, whose work is published in an interdisciplinary collective monograph by Ural Federal University (Ekaterinburg) in 2021. The authors of the monograph belong to different generations and national humanities’ schools, but they are united by a common historical memory, by an approach to homo soveticus as a multiform, not monolithic phenomenon. The personality typology of the 1930s is not identical to that of the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, and Soviet rule, despite all its might, could not completely control and subjugate people of the USSR — not only because the country was very large and diverse, but mainly because the ideology and politics of this rule contradicted life. The monograph opens new perspectives on an original, holistic approach to the study of the homo soveticus phenomenon, which includes its versions in the countries of Eastern Europe, as well as its perception by Russian emigrants.