Homo Sovieticus

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Such parallels with the now idealised late Soviet era were supposed to be one of Mr Putin's selling points. No tiresome political debate, fairly broad personal freedoms, shops full of food: wasn't that what people wanted? Instead, unthinkably, Mr Putin has been booed: first by an audience at a martial-arts event on November 20th, then at many polling stations, and now on the streets. The Soviet rhetoric conjured an anti-Soviet response. Indifference to common property and to petty theft from the workplace, either for personal use or for profit. [7] A line from a popular song, "Everything belongs to the kolkhoz, everything belongs to me" (" всё теперь колхозное, всё теперь моё" / vsyo teperь kolkhoznoe, vsyo teperь moyo), meaning that people on collective farms treasured all common property as their own, was sometimes used ironically to refer to instances of petty theft: "Take from the plant every nail, you are the owner here, not a guest" (" Тащи с завода каждый гвоздь - ты здесь хозяин, а не гость" / taschi s zavoda kazhdyj gvozd' - ty zdes' hozyain, a ne gost').

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 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). Whistleblowing Under the Whistleblowing Law, everyone is entitled to blow the whistle in the public and private sector regarding a threat to public interest observed in the working environment.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. Homosos nie oznacza degradacji. Przeciwnie, jest on najwyzszym produktem cywilizacji. Jest nadczlowiekiem. Uniwersalnym. Jezeli to koniecznie, zdolny jest do wszelkiego swinstwa. A jezeli to mozliwe, zdolny jest do kazdej cnoty.” (Zinoviev, 1984) Fictional characters and presentations of contemporary celebrities embodying this model were prominent features of Soviet cultural life, especially at times when fostering the concept of the New Soviet man was given special priority by the government.

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." The one missing piece is ideology. The Soviet Union was built on the enormous intellectual foundation of Marxism-Leninism. Putin by contrast has been grasping for an ideology to justify his rise to power, which is why he has found characters like Dugin useful. In his struggle with the West, as Gessen shows, the regime has whipped up hysteria over homosexual pedophilia, and presents itself as a defender of the traditional family and Christian values against an international LGBT conspiracy. This is one reason conservative groups in the United States and Western Europe have been steadily warming to Russia. This is not the kind of literary product one can savour with a glass of flinty Chablis, half-listening to the analog grit of some fresh lo-fi chillop. This is work both for the intellectual and the emotional aspects of readership, often punctured by tears, but always ending in a classic cleaning catharsis. I am fortunate to be able to read Alexievich in the original Russian, but even the English translations retain the thunderbolt strength of her laconicism. Truly, if the story (in this case, hundreds of stories) is enthralling, it requires no embellishment (sorry, Tolkien). Today, as the pandemic world convulses in the corrosive slops of populism, and in Alexievich’s native Belarus the emboldened dictator releases smug videos of himself with an automated gun (and his own underage son grotesquely clad in a spetznaz uniform), I revisit her Secondhand Time in search of answers, clues, and prophesies. What is the essence of a Soviet (and post-Soviet) person? What knowledge (if any) has been retained after decades with so much happening within them and yet with so little to show? What hope is there for hundreds of millions of identities stumbling, half-conscious, from ideology into ideology?The consequences of this probihiting of every individual initiative and the denial of individual freedom. Many Westerners and ex-Soviets (the ones younger or simply fortunate to be better oriented in matters of history and truth) scoff at the Homo Sovieticus for possessing the naivete of a blind kitten. Not Alexievich. There isn’t an ounce of ridicule in her approach. Instead, there is a profoundly humanist understanding of immeasurable loss and confusion, of deracinated personhood, and of a perpetually shifting system of ideological coordinates that only amplifies this disorientation. At work you say one thing, at home another, you pretend to do your job, your employer pretends to pay you, in public you pretend to be atheist while at home you teach your kids to say the namaz, and on and on it goes, this neverending umbilical cord of duplicity, chaining a person to the regime of lies. 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. The film's director Ivo Briedis and the journalist Rita Ruduša were both born in the Soviet Union. Together, they embark on a journey to explore the phenomenon of HOMO SOVIETICUS. They want to know if a totalitarian mindset can still be found in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Image: Mistrus Media Ethics The Code of Ethics lays down the fundamental principles of the professional ethics and conduct of the authority's staff.