TeachESL: Roger’s piece doesn’t imply that Smith’s comments were malevolent or intended as such.
JimC: Thanks for the Hillary reference. I was not aware of it. It’s chilling. She really does seem stuck in the pseudo-scientific, Marxist, Trotsky-ism of the Left wing of the spoiled brat generation:
New Soviet man
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The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (новый советский человек), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country’s long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
Lev Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
“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 and psychophysical training… Man will make it his goal…to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will”
The questions about the forming of the “new” Soviet man were posed from the first days of the October Revolution. As Wilhelm Reich wrote: “Will the new social system translated into the structure of a human personality? If yes, then in what way? 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?”[3]
The three major changes postulated to be indispensable for the building of the communist society were economical and political changes, accompanied with the changes in the human personality.[citation needed]
The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist Revolution. Adherence to Marxism-Leninism, and individual behaviour consistent with that philosophy’s prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man.
