New Soviet man

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The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (новый советский человек), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.^[1]

The questions about the forming of the "new" Soviet man were posed from the first days of the October Revolution. As Wilhelm Reich wrote: "Will the new social system translated into the sturture of a human personality? If yes, then in what way? Will his traits be inherited by his children? Will he be a free, self-regulating personality? Will the elements of freedom incorporated into the structure of the personality make any authoritarian forms of government unnecessary?"^[2]

The three major changes postulated to be indispensable for the building of the communist society were economical and political changes, accompanied with the changes in the human personality.^{[citation needed]}

The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist Revolution. Adherence to Marxism-Leninism, and individual behaviour consistent with that philosophy's prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man.

Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was selfless collectivism. This trait was glorified from the first Soviet days, as exemplified by lines from the poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky:

Who needs a "1"?

The woice of a "1"

is thinner than a squeak.

Who will hear it?

Only the wife...

A "1" in dodnsense.

A "1" is zero.

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.

Some critics of the Soviet Union argue that a new kind of person was indeed created by the Soviet system, but hold that this new man - which they call Homo sovieticus - was in many ways the opposite of the ideal of the New Soviet man.

[edit] See also

American dream

[edit] References

^ Nikolay Ustryalov, From NEP to Soviet Socialism (1934) (text online) (Russian)
^ Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Chapter 8, Masses and the State

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 (Russian)
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.")