Soviet man as sociocultural type
The article examines the evolution of attitudes towards the psychological characteristics of the Soviet man in national socio-humanitarian science. The author shows that there are three positions on this issue. The first, dating back to the time when it was impossible to write about the negative qualities of the Soviet personality, is based on singling out exclusively its positive properties. The second, characteristic of the time when the “fashion for repentance” was relevant, consists in associating the Soviet person mainly with negative qualities. The third, more objective position, which has established itself in recent years, is that both positive and negative properties coexisted in Soviet people. The author draws a distinction between the early Soviet “tough” totalitarian regime and the late Soviet — “softened” one, demonstrating, in particular, that the split personality of the Soviet man in the late Soviet period was the output of that era. An attempt is made to single out the subtypes of the late Soviet man, covering such categories as “faithful”, “cosmopolitan” and “detached”, the relationship between which served as a psychological basis for what happened during our reforms.