WAS THERE A ‘SIMPLE SOVIET’ PERSON? DEBATING THE POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF ‘HOMO SOVIETICUS’

TY - JOUR

T1 - WAS THERE A ‘SIMPLE SOVIET’ PERSON? DEBATING THE POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF ‘HOMO SOVIETICUS’

AU - Sharafutdinova, Gulnaz

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Intellectual efforts to understand the post-Crimean Russian society have brought to prominence explanations that emphasize psychological and attitudinal legacies of the Soviet society. The recent revival of the term homo sovieticus (or Soviet man) in the media and intellectual discourse is a good illustration of this trend. Yuri Levada’s late Soviet, sociological research project on ‘Soviet simple man’ serves as a frequent reference point in these discussions. In this article I explore the ideological and analytical foundations of the Levada project and juxtapose the sociological construct developed by Yuri Levada and his team with the interpretative approach developed by Natalya Kozlova, another Soviet scholar who dedicated her life to studying the Soviet society. I argue that essentialist and deterministic views of individual personality underpinning the Levada project that guide the current use of the ‘Soviet man’ category are more politically and ideologically driven rather than based on the state of the art in social psychology.

AB - Intellectual efforts to understand the post-Crimean Russian society have brought to prominence explanations that emphasize psychological and attitudinal legacies of the Soviet society. The recent revival of the term homo sovieticus (or Soviet man) in the media and intellectual discourse is a good illustration of this trend. Yuri Levada’s late Soviet, sociological research project on ‘Soviet simple man’ serves as a frequent reference point in these discussions. In this article I explore the ideological and analytical foundations of the Levada project and juxtapose the sociological construct developed by Yuri Levada and his team with the interpretative approach developed by Natalya Kozlova, another Soviet scholar who dedicated her life to studying the Soviet society. I argue that essentialist and deterministic views of individual personality underpinning the Levada project that guide the current use of the ‘Soviet man’ category are more politically and ideologically driven rather than based on the state of the art in social psychology.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85065246921&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/slr.2019.13

DO - 10.1017/slr.2019.13

M3 - Article

SN - 0037-6779

VL - 78

SP - 173

EP - 195

JO - SLAVIC REVIEW

JF - SLAVIC REVIEW

IS - 1

ER -