Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 22 – The changes in regimes
Russians have experienced over the last 40 years have transformed the basic
social type from homo sovieticus to homo post-Sovieticus and nowt to homo Putinus, an evolution that is “extremely
interesting to observe but not always something to be happy about,” Dmitry
Gubin says.
In a Rosbalt commentary, the Russian
journalist, writer, and television host says that these three types represent
different “social types, although they are closely related” with some elements
of the earlier ones playing a role in defining the features of their successors
(rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/04/21/1698001.html).
Viewed from this distance, Gubin
says, homo sovieticus looks “even
sympathetic.” Yes, he knew when to shout hurrah, drank too much and “knew that the
USSR was better than America because in America, they lynch Negroes.” But he didn’t really believe in Marxism-Leninism
or want to see the country go to war.
“Homo
post-Sovieticus,” he continues, set aside his “idealism and hypocrisy as
soon as he acquired money.” This new man, which had its apogee in the period
between 1996 and 2012, the commentator says, “the era of triumphant glamour
wanted not so much things as status,” something he believed he could acquire by
buying foreign goods.
“Having gotten rich, post-Sovieticus didn’t set up a society
of equals. On the contrary, he cut himself off from his neighbors,” erecting walls
reaching “to the moon.” And he “began to relate to the world as to a store,
having [almost entirely] forgotten that the world is a school class.”
According to
Gubin, “the ideological emptiness of post-Sovieticus
was filled by everyday racism: Europe in his eyes was a place for shopping
and rest but where unhappily Negroes and Arabs walked about on the streets when
in his opinion they should have been kept” out of sight so as not to disturb
people like himself.
There have been many articles and
even books about homo sovieticus and homo post-sovieticus, the commentator
says; but so far, because homo putinus
is so new, “nothing has been written.” Indeed, the type emerged in its full
horror only “after Crimea when “glamour was replaced by patriotism.”
This new man is significantly
different than his predecessors. “For example, in his passionate rejection of
the personal and individual in favor of the general and collective. And this
isn’t the Soviet ‘think first about the Motherland and then about yourself.’”
Instead, it has defined its motherland in a new and disturbing way.
“If homo post-sovieticus defined himself by his profession or income … homo putinus has begun to define himself
by the expression ‘I am a Russian,’ without noticing that the individuality in this
is defined by the denial of the individual,” Gubin says.
Another characteristic of this human
type, he continues, is its hypocrisy and a syncretic and mechanical combination
of the mutually exclusive. Homo putinus sees nothing problematic in a scene “where
a monument to Lenin faces a new Orthodox church and Nicholas II and Stalin
stand alongside one another as two heroes.”
Similarly, “homo putinus at one and the
same time curses ‘Gayeurope,’ drives a German car, and signs that there will
never be roads in Russia like those in Europe although of course we are the
greatest country in the world.” He knows that the Orthodox Church “was born in the
CPSU but calls a priest to bless his office. He hasn’t read ten pages of the
New Testament but is nonetheless certain that a Russian must be Orthodox.”
“It is possible,” Gubin suggests, “that
this syncretism is connected with a third aspect of homo putinus,” an apparent desire to remain ignorant of the way of
the world. Of course, homo sovieticus didn’t know many things, but
he was “ashamed of his ignorance and respected knowledge.” Homo putinus is proud of his ignorance and has no respect for
learning.
Indeed, the latest new man has no
respect for culture and views “complicated, intellectual things as something
funny.” He doesn’t listen to classical music, he doesn’t read serious books, he
doesn’t support paying intellectual workers a living wage, and he can’t get a
serious newspaper because there aren’t any.
What homo putinus does to, again “as a result of syncretism,” is to
invest his money in the education of his children abroad if possible or at the
very most prestigious places in Moscow if necessary. “Children [for him] have
become not so much the meaning of life as a defense against it.”
In this way, homo putinus is “sharply limiting his life prospects to just two:
either learn a foreign language and emigrate or remain living in a country with
a stagnating economy and the possibility of landing in prison for an incautious
post on a social network.” Not surprisingly, such people are angry at just
about everything – “yet another typical aspect” of the type.
For homo putinus, Gubin says, “anger is justified by his view that he
lives in a besieged fortress,” although he become furious if someone suggests
Russia is becoming like North Korea, although he is acceptant of the idea that
a nuclear war is “almost inevitable: if you don’t want to take us into consideration,
then you can die together with us.”
And that too is a basic
characteristic of homo putinus, something
that makes him far more dangerous than either of his predecessors.
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