


The long life of Homo sovieticus

This week’s elections and upheavals in Russia show how hard it is, 20 years after the system collapsed, for the country to put away its Soviet past

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I remember in the early 1990s, Sweden was also under going a very rough recession. i remember Gorbachev saying recently, looking back, that a gradual transition was not possible. Unlike China, the bureaucrats in the USsR were very entrenched.


This year will certainly be characterized by the human desire calling for freedom and fight against old ideology / Solid article!

brendan steuble

A single mother with 19 children?!


She sure must be pretty. Or: WTF!

Really? We care what this SLUT has to say? And, before you boot me, this is actually what the word means. 19 children, single mother, eh? Unconscionable. Condoms are cheap.

Ha ha ha ha ha.


You elide the contribution of the West, especially the Chicago School to the current state of Russia. Instead of a graduated transition to a socialist democracy along the lines of Sweden, which Gorbachov envisaged, the West's victorious schadenfreude promoted the fire sale and rapid dismantling of the economy. This bred chaos and placed most wealth producing assets in the hands of the oligarchs. No wonder Putin was initially seen as a saviour, but the concomitant of that was the entrenchment of the current sick system. The early nineties were an opportunity to encourage the development of a valued member of the global community, but the West got greedy and muffed it. The current situation is in part a product of that missed opportunity.


At the Saturday protests, Putin looked for protection for the Kremlin and relied on the aptly-called DZERZHINSKAYA division of Russian Interior Troops, who are masters at suppressing urban protests, and are named after the bloodthirsty, merciless founder of the Soviet Secret Police Feliks Dzerzhinsky - an unadulterated torturer and murderer, and #hero of Russian Prime Minister Polonium. Talk about the Sovok disease living strong in the veins. Soviet KGB butchers are still honoured - this is the Homo Sovieticus society.

How would the civilized world react to the elite division of today's German Internal Police being named after Heinrich Himmler? There would be an outcry, and rightly so. But this is Putin's Russia where apathy for too long has been the reaction to crimes of rulers or a whitewashing of history - Stalin, etc. This is the upside-down world of the Sovok like Putin: butchers become heroes, victims of Sovieticus/Putin like Liudmilla Alekseyeva are portrayed as Nazis and traitors to the motherland by the PutinJugend Nashi.

The way I see Putin playing this one out is to hope the movement to civil society fizzles out and to keep claiming Western connections to the young protestors. Historically, whenever an internal crisis rocks Russia, the rulers never blame themselves but prey on Russian xenophobia and proclaim it all the work of foreign agents. The Czars did this, the commies, and now Putin.

I hope the Russian opposition follows up to their world and gathers again December 24 if Putin doesn't repsond in any positive way.

LKHK in reply to blake123


In today's Russia "Dzerzhinskaya Division" is just one of many pampered and glorfied legacies of its Soviet past. There is ex-KGB thug running the country, there is this embalmed mass murderer still on display in the middle of Moscow and his statues still stand in most Russian cities. Ever noticed logo of a "new" post-Soviet Aeroflot? http://www.planes.cz/cs/photo/1093218/il96-300-ra-96008-aeroflot-afl-su-... Stubbornly reminding us of its less-than-glorious Soviet past.


"that the country would embrace Western values and join the civilised world"

Aah ok.... So Western values=civilised & anything other than that isn't. The author talks about how Putin's dictatorial system yet slips in a seemingly innocuous comment which is a tad arrogant from a neutral point of view.

>>"that the country would embrace Western values and join the civilised world"

Aah ok.... So Western values=civilised & anything other than that isn't.<<

No. The author did not write that "Russia would join the civilised world by embracing Western values". The author wrote that Russia would do two things – embrace Western values (because, of all possible cultural groupings Russia is more white/European than anything else) *and* join the civilised world. Russia could also join the civilised world by, for example, embracing East Asian values, but that would be a little odd, no? What would make it difficult for Russia to join the civilised world is the keeping of the Soviet values, by which a country's population are the cattle of the State.


Russian homo sovieticus is made by family modeling since 3 generations. 3 more generatins and the model will disappear. In France, French homo robespetrus is made by family modeling since 9 generations, ie since the dirigist - self-identified to Etre Suprême - Robespierre ruled France. France suffered and will continue to suffer less but longer than Russia, ie before adopting a family democratic modeling. Want a concrete example? Present laws of inheritance have the purpose of destroying the nobility rules, since 1789. Trough heavy taxes the main heiress now is the state instead of the first of the famiiy. That is made with hypocrisis with the argument of equality between heiresses. In fact the children cannot pay the state taxes of inheritance and are forced to sell the real estate. Same rule since 9 generations, Many thousands of castles are now property of state, ie are in ruins or occupied in summer for vacancies of children of state social services. One of the greatest castle in Périgord is reserved since centuries for the children of the employess of Banque de France; and the state pays the travel expenses of parents who visit them there. State bureaucracy turned maffia.


It's good to see that what I wrote here the last three years finally emerge and will happen sooner than later.

First "Russia without Putin"

Second “146 percent of Muscovites are for free elections!” meaning at least 20% of Russians care about free and fair elections - meaning also a non-corrupt state - at least much much less corrupted.

Third and the most important: Russians who support Putin's political system are slaves. The others are not and we, as Europeans, need to support them.
“Everyone has the single most powerful weapon that we need — dignity, the feeling of self-respect,” ... “It’s impossible to beat and arrest hundreds of thousands, millions. We have not even been intimidated. For some time, we were simply convinced that the life of toads and rats, the life of mute cattle, was the only way to win the reward of stability and economic growth.”
“We are not cattle or slaves,” he said. “We have voices and votes and we have the power to uphold them.”
“I have always lived well,” she said. “We are not starving, of course, but we were turned into cattle.”

Mr Navalny said from his jail: " The time has come to throw off the chains. We are not cattle or slaves. We have a voice and we have the strength to defend it"

It fits we all I wrote the last three years: Russians act like slave if they don't fight for their rights to be respected, to act as citizens of a Russian democracy which will be - in ten, twenty or thirty years or more - part of European continent unified with the Chinese.

Because the Chinese also will become a democracy - there are already on this path , in their way.

gbsamara in reply to walterbenjamin

walterbenjamin, as one of the Russians who don't support Putin's political system I beg you and your followers: please, don't "support" us. I thought one of the "Western values" is to treat all human beings with respect, even Russian slaves.


It is difficult to govern Russia after 70 years of despotic communism – 20 years of democracy is a short time period. Put in perspective, it took for self-proclaimed bastion of democracy the USA almost 200 years to make blacks partly emancipated and Indians still live on desolate reservations.

Author’s unbelievable naivety: “…that the country would embrace Western values and join the civilised world.” What? Western values of greed and deceit a la Enron or Madoff where ordinary people lost billions, Russians thieves are amateurs in comparison.

Obviously Putin is uncompromising and not easy manipulating leader that Russia needs and obviously he is not liked by the Washington, they prefer somebody like drunken Yeltsin.

I don’t see any difference between this demonstration (of communist revisionists) and the hypocritical silence of the US jailing and beating protester of Occupy even as we speak that is spreading thru out the country. You cannot base whole article on one subjective source Gudkov of Levada.

aidan clarke in reply to Seven839

All the other countries in Eastern Europe had 70 years of despotic communism also, and they are all (save for Belarus) doing much, much better at democratic rule in the interests of the average citizen than Russia is today.

China still has despotic something-or-other, but is again doing much, much better at autocratic rule in the interests of the average citizen than Russia is today.

The problem with Putin's Russia, is not that it is not perfect, but that he is forcing it to go IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. The problem with Putin's rule is that his only goal is to benefit himself (and the tiny handful of the elite vassals who serve him) at the expense of the average Russian and the country of Russia (again, contrast this against less venal and more competent autocracies such as China, Singapore, etc.).

It is because of this self-serving venality and absolute focus on short-term plunder of its leadership, that Russia has become increasingly irrelevant on the world stage. Provided the gas keeps in flowing (while it still can) and no flagrant abuses are taking place, Western politicians do not really care too much about what is going on in Russia, and whether Putin, Yeltsin, or Schmeltsin are leading the country's looting. It exactly mirrors the approach they take/used to take to the 'great powers' of Venezuela and Libya. Instead, it falls to some parts of Western civil society to periodically express their sadness and anger at the abuse of their Russian counterparts by the Russian state. So stop with the conspiracy theories – Russia is no longer relevant enough for the West to bother with.

Also stop with the tu quoque-ism. It is a well known logical fallacy and has not worked as an effective propaganda tool for ages. Give any average Russian an unconditional offer of US citizenship, and the vast majority would take it in a heartbeat, regardless of "part emancipation", "desolate reservations", Enron, Madoff, and the police response to the Occupy movement. Give the average American an unconditional offer of Russian citizenship, and the vast majority would be, at best, bemused.

Essex Junto

This all reminds me of a Yakov Smirnoff television advertisement for Budweiser beer in the USA, back during the 1980s:

"In America, you can always find a party. In Russia, the Party always finds YOU!"

Timothy D. Naegele

This is an excellent article, which is true of the Economist's other unvarnished, sophisticated commentaries about Putin. So true is the observation: "[T]he process of dismantling the Soviet system, which started 20 years ago, is far from over."

As I was told by a friend who also worked in the U.S. Congress when Putin came to power, he is a "smoother" version of Joseph Stalin. This helped to put him into perspective. He is not a Westernized Russian democrat, or anything remotely close.

Why should anyone be the least bit surprised by the demonstrations against him? Much worse is yet to come. Similar to other despots before him, he is likely to pay careful attention to how Kim Jong-il and the Islamic fascists have stayed in power in North Korea and Iran respectively, and how Muammar Gaddafi lost power and died ignominiously in Libya.

Having risen up through the ranks of the KGB in the the DDR—or East Germany under Erich Honecker’s reign, which was one of the most repressive regimes in the Soviet Union’s orbit—Putin learned his lessons well. He knows how to wield power, with life and death consequences. It is second nature to him.

I was in Berlin shortly after the Wall fell, when Soviet troops were leaving—and trying to sell their uniforms, and taking plumbing from their barracks that might be sold as well. They were retreating to "tent cities," and I am sure the retreat from Afghanistan is embedded in "dictator-for-life" Putin's psyche as well.


See http://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#c... ("Dictator-For-Life Putin Follows In The Footsteps Of Stalin, Hitler And Mao") (see also the article itself, as well as the footnotes and all other comments beneath it)

This article observes:

"What Stalin wrought by repression and extermination, [Putin's] Russia achieves by corruption and state violence."

This is a distinction without a difference.

The article concludes with a poignant and sobering vision:




As China's communists discovered even before Putin, the difference between now and then is the internet. Gone are the bad old days of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, when people barely possessed a tiny radio with which to listen to the propaganda speeches of their dictator, and the press was heavily censored.


Leaders should only serve two terms so as to give others the experience of leading and to allow democracy to develop. Voters would be better off in selecting ordinary professionals such as teachers and doctors rather than career politicians to prevent corruption and the build up of excesses (discouraging the build up of excesses is also a benefit of a two term limit).


You speak of "Western value" and "civilized world" in the same breath. That says it all. Times are changing. The Economist is still a relic of the 20th century.


The Homo Eurozonus is not doing better

Yura2009 in reply to Kalisimba

If by Eurozonus you mean an 'average' European, he/she is yet to emerge from the process of unifying a divided but democratic Europe. By contrast, Homo Sovieticus has been formed after 70 years of communist autocracy in a country that never knew free thinking liberal multiparty democracy.


An honest and superbly written thing. Go this way The Economist and you will change the world bit by bit.


If these young Russians were demonstrating in the U.S. they would have been pepper sprayed and jailed immediately.


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