Homo Soveticus
Homo soveticus, a term coined in 1982 by Russian philosopher Aleksandr Zinovyev, in order to caricature the “new Soviet man” glorified by Soviet propagandists.
As with all historical phenomena, the time of transition bore many faces. Tiit Made (born in 1940) has described how people lived from hand to mouth, trying to come to grips with the deficit:
“Homo soveticus could not imagine his life without the all-powerful deficit, the daily scarcity of even the most basic products. Keeping your hand on the pulse of the network of distribution on a daily basis, but especially the choice of your ‘place’ and the ability to ‘comb’ the network were the most important factors. This often made you catch for breath, but it kept your body weight under control and your mind awake. Those unfortunate people who had to spend their whole day in their workplace, were of course left outside this distribution system that was essential for the procurement of basic household products.
It was also important to react effectively when people were standing in a line, no matter where. It was inconsequential whether you knew or did not know what was on offer. It was necessary to take your place in the queue, after that you had time to clarify, for what reason people were standing. When it turned out that the goods on offer were unnecessary for your family at the time, you had to take it (that is, buy it) nevertheless, because you could never know when one of the cornerstones of the economic theory of Karl Marx - that one sheep trades for four axes – did its trick”.
But there were also people whom the deficit hardly affected. Kalev Jaik (born in 1942) has looked back on his experience as follows:
“For me and my mother, the enormous deficit of goods never caused much trouble. As before, we had bread, milk, flour and groats, cheese, sausages etc on the table and we consumed them as before. We did not even try to buy cloth, footwear, soap, washing powder or other industrial goods, which had also disappeared from shops. We had bought all these basic goods in quite large quantities and saved them for the future: at least a couple of dozen kilograms of sugar, at least 50 kg of flour and groats, matches, soap and washing powder for at least seven years, cloth and shoes for at least ten years, firewood for about five years, potatoes and vegetables, juices and jams for a whole year, etc. For instance, in Soviet times we had saved such quantities of matches and washing powder that even now, 12 years later, our stores have not dried up yet, although in the meantime we have become almost penniless.
We have always saved such stocks, if possible, since at least 1951... We have always lived preparing us, so to say, for catastrophe and horror”.
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