New Soviet man

The New Soviet man or New Soviet person , as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...

, was an archetype

Archetype

An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype after which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all...

 of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...

, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people

Soviet people

Soviet nation was an ideological demonym and proposed ethnonym for the population of the Soviet Union. It first appeared in official usage in the 1970s.-History:...

, Soviet nation.

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...

 wrote in his Literature and Revolution :

"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection

Artificial selection

Artificial selection describes intentional breeding for certain traits, or combination of traits. The term was utilized by Charles Darwin in contrast to natural selection, in which the differential reproduction of organisms with certain traits is attributed to improved survival or reproductive...

 and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines which attempts to explain social behavior in animal species by considering the Darwinian advantages specific behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution,...

, a superman

Übermensch

The Übermensch is a concept in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....

, if you will"

The questions about the forming of the "new" Soviet man were posed from the first days of the October Revolution

October Revolution

TheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...

. As Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...

 wrote: "Will the new socio-economic system reproduce itself in the structure of the people's character? If so, how? 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?"

The three major changes postulated to be indispensable for the building of the communist society

Communist society

Communist society is the final stage of human history as envisioned by Karl Marx. It follows the "withering away" of the socialist state.In Marx's view, Capitalism comes into power via the thesis-antithesis-synthesis paradigm, and will inevitably be overthrown by the same way to create Socialism...

 were economical and political changes, accompanied with the changes in the human personality.

The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist Revolution. Adherence to Marxism-Leninism

Marxism-Leninism

Marxism-Leninism is a communist ideological stream that emerged as the mainstream tendency among the Communist parties in the 1920s as it was adopted as the ideological foundation of the Communist International during Stalin's era....

, and individual behaviour consistent with that philosophy's prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man.

Author and philosopher Bernard Byhovsky, Ph.D. writes: "The new man is endowed, first of all, with a new ethical outlook."

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

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...

:

Who needs a "1"?

The voice of a "1"

is thinner than a squeak.

Who will hear it?

Only the wife...

A "1" is nonsense.

A "1" is zero.

Fictional characters and presentations of contemporary celebrities embodying this model were prominent features of Soviet cultural

Culture

Culture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 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

Homo Sovieticus

Homo Sovieticus is a sarcastic and critical reference to a category of people with a specific mindset that were allegedly created by the governments of the Eastern Bloc. The term was coined by well-known Soviet writer and sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev as the title of his book of the same name...

 - was in many ways the opposite of the ideal of the New Soviet man.

See also

• New class
  New class
  The new class is a term used to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist Party functionaries which typically arises in a Stalinist Communist state. Generally, the group known in the Soviet Union as the Nomenklatura conforms to the theory of the new class...
  
  
• New People
• Family in the Soviet Union
  Family in the Soviet Union
  The view of the Soviet family as the basic social unit in society evolved from revolutionary to conservative; the government of the Soviet Union first attempted to weaken the family and then to strengthen it...
  
  

Non Communist:

• American dream
  American Dream
  The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States of America in which democratic ideals are perceived as a promise of prosperity for its people...
  
  
• Übermensch
  Übermensch
  The Übermensch is a concept in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....