Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 8 – Many observers
view the behavior of Russians today as a revival of “homo sovieticus,” the
special kind of human being the communists created over the course of
decades. But they are wrong, Igor
Yakovenko says. What is on display now is not that anthropological type but rather
a new phenomenon altogether, “homo putinus.”
In a commentary on Novy region-2,
the Ukrainian commentator argues that a quarter century after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, the real “homo sovieticus” or “sovok” is “dead.” The social
system that gave rise to that anthropological type is gone. Both have been
replaced (nr2.com.ua/blogs/Igor_Jakovenko/Nazvany-priznaki-populyacii-Homo-putinus--103375.html).
“Homo putinus or ‘the Putin man’ is
formed by three factors,” Yakovenko says, “television, consumption and the
total extermination of any norms, from moral and legal to linguistic and
scholarly,” a situation which leads its exemplars to shamelessly, even proudly
do what homo sovieticus was typically more embarrassed about.
For example, “homo putinus writes
denunciations openly; it never comes into his head to think that he is doing
something not quite right.” In the times of the USSR, in contrast, homo
sovieticus often would do the same thing but without being especially proud of
it or willing to claim that he or she was right to do it.
Among the examples of the behavior
of the typical “homo putinus” he gives, perhaps the most striking concerns how
the press secretary of the Moscow subway system reacted after a man jumped down
onto the tracks to rescue a woman who had fallen there and who was at risk of
being killed by an oncoming train.
Instead of suggesting the man was a
hero for doing so, the press secretary said that the authorities should fine
the man 30,000 rubles (500 US dollars) because “what he had done was a serious
violation of the rules.” He should have known that the best course for the
woman was to lie down in between the tracks and let the train run over her
head.
“The idiot who serves as press
secretary in the subway system apparently can’t get it into his blockhead that
first of all ordinary citizens simply have nowhere to find out about the rules
of behavior in extreme situations and second that the attempt to help someone
near who is in trouble is how people should behave; condemning someone for
doing that is moral ugliness.”
Another example Yakovenko provides
which makes the contrast between “homo putinus” and “homo sovieticus” even
clearer is the following: “The Soviet elite lived several times better than the
people,” but it didn’t flaunt its privileges. Instead, it typically acted as if
“it was necessary to conceal this from people.”
But in an utterly “shameless” way, “homo
putinus “lives already several orders more richly [but] flaunts its luxuries”
even when the cost of any particular item “exceeds the budget of a small city.” The “homo sovieticus” “committed many
stupidities and vulgarities but as a rule did so secretly. “Homo putinus” does
the same thing but “openly and even with the help of selfies seeks to ensure
that about his vulgarities as many people as possible know.”
“Shamelessness is thus one of the
key distinctions of the current [Russian] population from the soviet one,” the
Ukrainian commentator says.
This is manifested in another way as
well, he points out. “Homo sovieticus” living behind the iron curtain “sincerely
believed that he lived well and that all the rest of the world was suffering in
a capitalist and colonialist hell.” The Harvard Project which interviewed thousands
of Soviet DPs after World War II documented tht.
But “the homo putinus,” who “has
access to all information” with two thirds of the population having access to
the Internet and who faces a state machine that is incomparably smaller than
that of the USSR, nonetheless servilely falls in line as sometimes “homo
sovieticus” did not.
When Khrushchev raised food prices
in 1962, the people of Novocherkassk rose up and had to be suppressed by tanks.
But today, “homo putinus” tolerates in a timid way not only the destruction of
foodstuffs, the reduction or elimination of pension benefits, and an ever
harsher life without protest. “Homo
sovieticus,” he suggests, would not.
This “voluntary striving for slavery
even when one has access to information and the absence of a critical level of
force are also characteristics of homo putinus,” Yakovenko says. But he urges
that this anthropological type be studied now because, he suggests, it won’t
last nearly as long as “homo sovieticus” did.
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