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Homo Sovieticus
''Homo Sovieticus'' (Dog Latin for "Soviet Man") is a pejorative for an average conformist person in the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern Bloc. The term was popularized by Soviet writer and sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev, who wrote the book titled ''Homo Sovieticus''. Michel Heller asserted that the term was coined in the introduction of a 1974 monograph "Sovetskye lyudi" ("Soviet People") to describe the next level of evolution of humanity thanks to the success of Marxist social experiment. In a book published in 1981, but available in ''samizdat'' in the 1970s, Zinovyev also coined an abbreviation ''homosos'' (''гомосос'', literally a ''homosucker''). Characteristics The idea that the Soviet system would create a new, better kind of Soviet people was first postulated by the advocates of the system; they called the prospective outcome the "New Soviet man". ''Homo Sovieticus'', however, was a term with largely negative connotations, invented by opponen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Propaganda In The Soviet Union
Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication to promote class conflict, internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself. The main Soviet censorship body, Glavlit, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item." Under Stalinism, deviation from the dictates of official propaganda was punished by execution and labor camps. Afterwards, such punitive measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, prison, denial of work, and loss of citizenship. "Today a man only talks freely to his wife – at night, with the blankets pulled over his head," the writer Isaac Babel privately told a trusted friend.Robert Conquest ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) , pp. 101–111. Theory of propaganda According to historian Peter Kenez, "the Russian socialists have contributed nothing to the theoretical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the intelligentsia consists of scholars, academics, teachers, journalists, and literary writers. Conceptually, the intelligentsia status class arose in the late 18th century, during the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795). Etymologically, the 19th-century Polish intellectual Bronisław Trentowski coined the term ''inteligencja'' (intellectuals) to identify and describe the university-educated and professionally active social stratum of the patriotic bourgeoisie; men and women whose intellectualism would provide moral and political leadership to Poland in opposing the cultural hegemony of the Russian Empire. In pre–Revolutionary (1917) Russia, the term ''intelligentsiya'' (russian: интеллигенция) identified and described the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Levada Center
The Levada Center is a Russian independent, nongovernmental polling and sociological research organization. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada (1930–2006). The center traces back its history to 1987 when the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) was founded under the leadership of academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya. Being one of the largest Russian research companies, the Levada Center regularly conducts its own and commissioned polling and marketing research. In 2016, it was labelled a foreign agent under the 2012 Russian foreign agent law. History The Levada Center was formed in 1987–88 as the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM, ), under the direction of Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Boris Grushin, Valery Rutgajzer and Yuri Levada. VTsIOM was the first organization to carry out representative mass surveys within the Russian population. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, now the honorary president of Levada Center, headed VT ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexei Yurchak
Alexei Yurchak (russian: Алексей Владимирович Юрчак) is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Born and raised in Leningrad, the Soviet Union, his research concerns Soviet history and post-Soviet transformations in Russia and the former Soviet Union. "Hypernormalisation" Yurchak coined the term "hypernormalisation" in his 2005 book ''Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation''. The book focused on the political, social and cultural conditions during what he terms "late socialism" (the period after Stalin but before Perestroika, mid-1950s – mid-1980s) which led to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet state in 1991. In 2007 ''Everything was Forever'' won the Wayne Vucinic award (best book of the year) from the American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Yurchak rewrote the book in Russian, expanding and revising it considerably. It was published in 2014 by NLO (Mosc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Anthropology
Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In the United States, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology or sociocultural anthropology. Comparison with cultural anthropology The term ''cultural'' anthropology is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in spirit, are oriented to the ways in which culture affects individual experience, or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. ''Social'' anthropology is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevisation. Today, Marxism–Leninism is the ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (all one-party 'socialist republics'), as well as many other communist parties, while the state ideology of North Korea is derived from Marxism–Leninism. Marxist–Leninist states are commonly referred to as "communist states" by Western academics. Marxism–Leninism holds that a two-stage communist revolution is needed to replace capitalism. A vanguard party, organized through " democratic centralism", would seize power on behalf of the proletariat and establish a one-party socialist state, called the dict ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doublethink
Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy. George Orwell coined the term ''doublethink'' (as part of the fictional language of Newspeak) in his 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.Orwell, George. 1949. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. In the novel, its origins within the citizenry is unclear; while it could be partly a product of Big Brother's formal brainwashing programs,Such as, for example, the seemingly formal brainwashing program that broke Winston Smith. the novel explicitly shows people learning doublethink and Newspeak due to peer pressure and a desire to "fit in," or gain status within the Party—to be seen as a loyal Party Member. In the novel, for someone to even recognize—let alone mention—any contradiction within the conte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The History Of The Communist Party Of The Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)
The ''History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course'' (russian: История Всесоюзной коммунистической партии (большевиков). Краткий курс), translated to English under the title ''History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course'', is a textbook on the history of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (AUCP (B)) ( ru , Всесоюзная коммунистическая партия (большевиков) — ВКП(б) , translit = Vsesoyuznaya kommunisticheskaya partiya (bol'shevikov) - VKP(b)), first published in 1938. Colloquially known as the ''Short Course'' ( ru , Краткий курс), it became the most widely disseminated book during the time (until 1952) that Joseph Stalin served as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the AUCP (B) and one of the most important works elucidating Marxism–Leninism. Overview The book was commi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski (; ; 23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history, '' Main Currents of Marxism'' (1976). In his later work, Kołakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. In his 1986 Jefferson Lecture, he asserted that " learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are".Leszek Kołakowski, "The Idolatry of Politics," reprinted in ''Modernity on Endless Trial'' (University of Chicago Press, 1990, paperback edition 1997), , , , p. 158. Due to his criticism of Marxism and of the Communist state system, Kołakowski was effectively exiled from Poland in 1968. He spent most of the remainder of his career at All Souls College, Oxford. Despite being in exile, Kołakowski was a major inspiration for the Solidarity movement that flourished in Poland in the 1980s and helped bring about the collapse o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Globe And Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it falls slightly behind the ''Toronto Star'' in overall weekly circulation because the ''Star'' publishes a Sunday edition, whereas the ''Globe'' does not. ''The Globe and Mail'' is regarded by some as Canada's " newspaper of record". ''The Globe and Mail''s predecessors, '' The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' were both established in the 19th century. The former was established in 1844, while the latter was established in 1895 through a merger of ''The Toronto Mail'' and the ''Toronto Empire''. In 1936, ''The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' merged to form ''The Globe and Mail''. The newspaper was acquired by FP Publications in 1965, who later sold the paper to the Thomson Corporation in 1980. In 2001, the paper merged with broadcast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political '' status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states. The political scientist Juan Linz, in an influential 1964 work, ''An Authoritarian Regime: Spain'', defined authoritarianism as possessing four qualities: # Limited political pluralism, is realized with constraints on the legislature, political parties and interest groups. # Political legitimacy is based upon appeals to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
