The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский человек, romanized: novy sovetsky chelovek), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with specific qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single united Soviet people and Soviet nation.
New Man The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy, muscular, and enthusiastic in spreading the communist Revolution. Adherence to Bolshevism, and later Marxism–Leninism, and individual behavior consistent with those philosophies' prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man, which required intellectualism and hard discipline. He was not driven by crude impulses of nature but by conscious self-mastery, a belief that required the rejection of both innate personality and the unconscious, which Soviet psychologists therefore rejected. He treated public property with respect, as if it were his own. He should regard himself as being Soviet (culturally, ethnically, and linguistically) rather than Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, or any of the many other people and cultures found in the USSR. His work required exertion and austerity, to show the new man triumphing over his base instincts. Alexey Stakhanov's record-breaking day in mining coal caused him to be set forth as the exemplar of the "new man" and the members of Stakhanovite movements tried to become Stakhanovites. This could also be a new woman; Pravda described the Soviet woman as someone who had and could never have existed before. Female Stakhanovites were rarer than male, but a quarter of all trade-union women were designated as "norm-breaking." For the Paris World Fair, Vera Mukhina depicted a momentual sculpture, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, dressed in work clothing, pressing forward with his hammer and her sickle crossed. Alexander Zinoviev put forth the satirical argument that a new kind of person was indeed created by the Soviet system, but held that this new man - which they call Homo Sovieticus - was in many ways the opposite of the ideal of the New Soviet man.
Selflessness Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was selfless collectivism. The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice his life for good causes. This trait was glorified from the first Soviet days, as exemplified by lines from the poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky:
Fictional characters and presentations of contemporary celebrities embodying this model were prominent features of Soviet cultural life, especially at times when fostering the concept of the New Soviet man was given special priority by the government. Pronatalist policies encouraging women to have many children were justified by the selfishness inherent in limiting the next generation of "new men."
New Soviet Woman
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