Homo Sovieticus
Homo Sovieticus (Dog Latin for "Soviet Man") is a sarcastic and critical reference to the average person in the Soviet Union, also observed in other countries of the Eastern Bloc The term was popularized by Soviet writer and sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev, who wrote the book titled Homo Sovieticus. A similar term in Russian slang is sovok (совок, plural: sovki, совки), which is derived from "Soviet" (literally means "scoop (tool)").
Michel Heller claimed 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).
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 it the "New Soviet man". Homo Sovieticus, however, was a term with negative connotations, invented by opponents to describe what they said was the real result of Soviet policies. In many ways it meant the opposite of the New Soviet man, someone characterized by the following:
