Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for 'Soviet Man') is an anti-communist[1] pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries.
Historians and sociologists, such as Michel Heller and Yuri Levada, defined Homo Sovieticus by traits like indifference, theft, lack of initiative, and submission to authority.
[3] The concept sparked debates about its empirical basis and continued existence in post-Soviet Russia, with opinions varying on whether it was a valid characterization or a biased ideological construct.
[citation needed] In many ways it meant the opposite of the New Soviet man, someone characterized by the following: According to Leszek Kolakowski, the Short course history of the CPSU(b) played a crucial role in forming the key social and mental features of the Homo Sovieticus as a "textbook of false memory and double thinking".
This inevitably led to forming "a new Soviet man: ideological schizophrenic, honest liar, person always ready for constant and voluntary mental self-mutilations".
His suppressed aggression, birthed by his chronic dissatisfaction with life, his intense sense of injustice and his inability to achieve self-realisation, and his great envy, all erupt into a fascination with force and violence, as well as a tendency towards "negative identification" – in opposition to "the enemy" or "the foreigner".
Geller believed that if you remove the advertising rhetoric, then these features completely coincide with the description of Zinovyev, and cited the following version of the text from the book Homo Sovieticus:[9][10] Homo sovieticus is accustomed to live in relatively bad conditions, is ready to face difficulties, constantly expects the worst; approves of the actions of the authorities; seeks to prevent those who violate habitual forms of behavior, fully supports the leadership; has a standard ideologized consciousness; a sense of responsibility for his country; is ready to sacrifice and is ready to condemn others to sacrifice.According to the English Slavist Frank Ellis, a former lecturer at the University of Leeds, the constant attacks on reason, common sense and the rules of decency both distort and cripple both personality and intellect, and abolish the boundary between truth and falsehood.
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.