homo sovieticus

Translingual

Alternative forms

• Homo sovieticus, Homo Sovieticus, homo Sovieticus

Etymology

First appears c. 1918 in the publication Collected Reprints by Asa Crawford Chandler, but popularized by the philosopher Alexander Zinoviev in the early 1980s; from Contemporary Latin homō sovieticus (“Soviet man”), a calque of colloquial Russian сове́тский челове́к (sovétskij čelovék) modelled on taxonomic names like Homo sapiens.

Pronunciation

• Latin: (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈhɔ.moː sɔ.wiˈɛ.t̪ɪ.kʊs]

Noun

homo sovieticus m (plural homines sovietici)

1. (usually derogatory) A person molded by having lived in the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc, variously characterized as passively conformist, apathetic, rootless, etc.
   • 1918, Asa Crawford Chandler, Collected Reprints (in English), page 231:

     The "homo sovieticus", as some writers call the members of the numerous states of the U.S.S.R., has, it seems, great admiration for sciences, though the expression of other intellectual activities is considearbly reduced.

   • 2000, Ania Savage, “Birth of an Independent Nation”, in Return to Ukraine (Eastern European Studies; 12) (in English), College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, →ISBN, page 177:

     Ukrainian became the language of the poor, the ignorant, and the backward. In the meantime, Soviet Ukrainian leaders, mimicking [Mikhail] Gorbachev, were saying that their babusias (the diminutive form of babushkas, or grandmothers) spoke a quaint tongue, but that Homo sovieticus was a man above quaintness and folklore.

   • 2017 September 5, Michael Gentile, Dmytro Potekhin, “Beyond Homo Sovieticus: Soviet identity as a weapon of mass deconstruction”, in New Eastern Europe‎^[1] (in English):

     Homines Sovietici represent, to put it differently, the human left-overs of socialism. An alternative non-ideological interpretation of homines sovietici is that they are individuals who responded in different ways to the rules and norms of the system which they were forced to navigate, just like in any other society. […]

Translations

Typical Soviet national

• Estonian: Nõukogude inimene
• Finnish: homo sovieticus, neuvostoihminen (fi)
• German: Sowjetmensch m
• Russian: сове́тский челове́к m (sovétskij čelovék), сово́к (ru) m (sovók)
• Swedish: homo sovieticus

See also

• sovok