By Paul Robinson, Website, 11/27/25
In my book Russian Liberalism, I noted the tendencies of modern Russian liberals to believe in a version of the ‘Two Russia’s Theory’. In its contemporary manifestation, this theory maintains that there are two Russias – the dark, barbaric masses on the one hand, and the enlightened intelligentsia on the other. The first is conservative, imperialistic, pro-regime, and Asiatic. The second is liberal, peaceful, anti-regime, and European. As Boris Nemtsov put it, “The Russian people, for the most part, are divided into two uneven groups. On part is the descendants of serfs, people with a slavish consciousness. There are very many of them and their leader is V. V. Putin. The other (smaller) part is born free, proud, and independent. It does not have a leader but needs one.”
An associated concept is that of Homo Sovieticus (or homosos for short) – the Soviet Man. According to those who believe in his existence, Homo Sovieticus is a product of the repressive nature of the Soviet system, which created a people replete with negative characteristics, such as subservience, deceitfulness, and national chauvinism. Adherents to the Two Russias Theory see the root of Russia’s problems as lying in the prevalence of Homo Sovieticus, and Russia’s salvation as lying in the replacement of Homo Sovieticus with a new national character, something that requires a thorough process of decommunization. A very similar logic lay behind the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, many of whose supporters saw it as leading to the elimination of the Sovok (another prejorative word for the Soviet-style person) and his replacement with the European.
With this in mind, it has been interesting of late to read several books which directly impinge on the issue of the Post-Soviet person – Homo Postsovieticus. Is the Post-Soviet Person Homo Sovieticus reincarnated? Or is he/she something completely different?
First off are two books by exiled Russian liberal intellectuals – Sergei Medvedev and Mikhail Shishkin. Unsurprisingly, they are passionate believers in the Two Russias Theory and in the idea that the root of Russia’s problems is the continued dominance of the Soviet personality with all its negative traits. In short, the fundamental cause of Russia’s autocratic political system and aggressive foreign policy is the mentality of the Russian people .
Medvedev reveals his worldview early on his book with the kind of statement that nowadays would probably be considered rather offensive in polite Western liberal circles. He writes: “Russia was the only one of the early empires of the modern era that survived a clash with the West, while all of the others [Aztecs, Incas, Persians, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese] … succumbed to the pressure of a superior civilization.” Russia, in other words, is an archaic non-Western civilization, and its problems derive from its failure to submit to “superior” civilization, i.e. the West.
Thus Medvedev remarks that “Russia is archaic.” The “practice of violence … runs through the whole of Russian society,” he writes, “the people are submissive, inert, fatalistic, and prepared for any sacrifices.” According to Medvedev, Russia suffers from “the immunodeficiency of society and low social capital. … a lack of trust … social atomization and a fragmented and embittered society. … This is a paternalistic, dependent society. … As a result the individual has developed a disdainful attitude to life.” Medvedev concludes that “Throughout the centuries, Russia has hung over Europe as the heir to the Asiatic hordes from the East,” and that the need to resist the Russian threat is what has created a common European identity. In 1945, he claims, the Allies failed to finish the job – defeating only the Germans, but leaving Russia alone. “It is time for the West to finish the work of 1945,” he concludes.
Mikhail Shishkin similarly desires Russia’s military defeat, and similarly believes in the Two Russia’s Theory and the psychological deficiencies of the Russian masses. He writes:
Russia has been in the unique situation of having its territory shared by two spiritually and culturally disparate nations. Both are Russian, both speak the same language – but mentally they are opposites. One head is furnished with a European education, a love of freedom and the idea that Russia is part of a global human civilization; it believes that the whole of Russian history is a bloody slough from which the country needs to be extricated, before being transformed into a liberal European society. This head refuses to live in a patriarchal dictatorship, and demands freedom, rights, and a constitution. The other head has a traditional view of the world; it believes that Holy Rus is an island surrounded by a hostile ocean, and that only the father in the Kremlin and his iron fist can save this island and its people, and maintain order in Russia.
A few pages later, Shishkin takes up the theme again:
The two “Russian nations” live cheek by jowl on the same streets, but in parallel realities. The majority of Russians are mentally still in the Middle Ages, and believe the zombie box that is television when it is tells them that the fatherland is surrounded by enemies. The rest, however, are too well travelled, too well read, and have surfed the internet. … These Russians take to the street and believe that Putin and his henchmen belong in prison; for the other Russians, the state is sacred and untouchable. The former believe that the country has to be led out of the bloody swamp that is Russian history, and towards a liberal European system. For the latter, only a tsar with an iron fist can guarantee order.
According to Shishkin, “In Russia, reason, knowledge, culture, intelligence and discernment make people unhappy.” There is only one way of out of this mess – Russia must suffer a defeat similar to that suffered by Germany in 1945. The people, of course, may object, “But any historical process is always preceded by an avant-garde. Progressives are ready to fight for democracy, and will take the masses with them.”
But are all these claims about Homo Sovieticus and the psychological failings of the Russian masses true? According to several recent academic studies, no.
A good starting point for a rebuttal comes with Gulnaz Sharafutdinova’s short book The Afterlife of the “Soviet Man”: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus. In this Sharaftudinova charts the development of the idea that communism had created a particular mentality in the people under it, starting with Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz and Bulgarian dissident Georgy Markov. She then examines the originator of the term Homo Sovieticus – Alexander Zinoviev – before moving onto to perestroika-era Soviet sociologist Yuri Levada, who claimed to have identified the characteristics of Homo Sovieticus by means of a large-scale survey of Soviet citizens.
Levada’s survey work gave the concept of Homo Sovieticus the gloss of scientific legitimacy and proved to be enormously influential. But Sharafutdinova criticizes Levada for relying on discredited theories such as Talcott Parson’s “structural functionalism” and the concept of totalitarianism. She complains that Levada’s work shifts blame for Russia’s problems from the government to the people, and that it is so wrapped up with moralizing language of good and bad that criticizing it has become almost impossible.
Sharaftudinova prefers the work of Soviet sociologist Natalia Kozlova. Whereas Levada relied on the quantitative analysis of survey data, Kozlova engaged in qualitative research, analyzing letters, diaries, letters, and other private documents written by Soviet citizens, in order to gain an understanding of what really made them tick. She came to entirely different conclusions. As Sharaftudinova notes, Kozlova concluded that “Soviet citizens could not be atomized or passive. Instead, they were active participants in making and remaking Soviet society.” From this, Sharaftudinova argues that we must rethink the theory of Homo Sovieticus and recognize “the constancy of human agency” in all human societies.
Another admirer of Kozlova and critic of Levada is British academic Jeremy Morris. In his blog Post-Socialism, Morris has argued that quantitative data can be extremely misleading as a means of judging popular attitudes. Instead, he advocates for an anthropological approach. It is only by living among people and careful observation of them that you can determine what it is they really think. Surveys just tell you how it is that they decided to answer the questions posed, not how they understood the questions, what they meant by their answers, and whether they were even answering honestly.
Morris takes up this theme in his book Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance. It contains a lot of academic theory, which as a historian not trained in theory, tends to go right over my head. I hope that Morris will excuse me if I have gotten this wrong, but one of the key takeaways seems to be that things in Russia are more complex than simple models of an all-powerful, repressive state and a submissive, inert population would suggest. In his conclusion he comments that people seek out places where they can act autonomously. Because these actions can only be observed “using micro-level methods of ethnographic engagement, the automatic assumption is to dismiss them as irrelevant.” But they are not. Politics at the macro level may have been suppressed, but “the micropolitical struggle continues,” even if only in the form of crafts such as woodworking or knitting. Crochet and painting may not be high politics but they do bring people together and push them “towards actualizing a life of community and autonomy, and a productivist one at that.” This is a community with ethics and sociality, revealing a people who are not quite the passive, unethical creatures of Homo Sovieticus imagination.
Another critic of Levada and the concept of Homo Sovieticus is New York University professor Eliot Borenstein, author of our final book: Soviet Self-Hatred: The Secret Identities of Postsocialism in Contemporary Russia.
In his book, Borenstein, uses contemporary Russian culture – films, TV, novels, poetry, internet fan fiction, and the like – to study several different negative Russian stereotypes – the Sovok, the Vatnik, the New Russian (the nouveaux riches who made their fortunes in the 1990s), and the Orc. These stereotypes reflect a deep post-Soviet identity crisis as well as a sense of shame about what Russia has become. But though the stereotypes reflect a type of self-hatred, they can also be a source of pride. One despises the Vatnik, but nevertheless he (and it is always a he, Borenstein notes) can also be seen as embodying something positive. He may be stupid and drunk, but he is at least patriotic. Thus Borenstein quotes the following poem:
I’m guilty before Europe
Because I’m happy beyond measure at Crimea’s return.
I remember the Crimean Spring,
And am not ashamed of my country.
…
I’m a vatnik. So those who destroy our monuments
Don’t recognize me.
…
I’m not ashamed to cry on Victory Day.
I have not forgotten!
I remember!
I am proud!
There is a sort of process of inversion here, in which Russians take the characteristics that Medveded, Shishkin, and those like them despise, and then make them out to be something good. This is particularly well portrayed in Borenstein’s chapter about the Orc. In this, Borenstein makes an interesting argument that Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings is racist. The book features a bunch of “good guys”, who happen to be pale skinned, decidedly Anglo-Saxon, and live in the western part of Middle Earth. And it pits them against a bunch of dark-skinned “bad guys,” who happen to live in the east. Borenstein records that some Russians have interpreted this as being directed against Russia. And indeed, it is true that during the war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have taken to referring to Russia as “Mordor” and Russians as “Orcs.” And so Russians have inverted it, and in some cases adopted the Orcish label as their own – “Orknash” as Borenstein puts it (echoing the phrase “Krym nash” – Crimea is ours).
Thus, in Russian fan fiction The Lord of the Rings has been portrayed as “Elvish propaganda,” falsely tarnishing the name of Mordor and the Orcs to justify Western Middle Earthish aggression. But as Borenstein points out, taking pride in the Orc is rather different than taking pride in the vatnik or sovok, for the Orc is a lot more violent. Or as Borenstein puts it, “The Orc is the sovok weaponized.”
There is a connection here with my most recent book, about Russian civilizationism. There, I note that liberalism generally rejects civilizationism, and insists on the universal validity of liberal values. Claims to be a distinct civilization are viewed as an excuse used by repressive rulers to justify why they behave contrary to what we consider moral norms of behaviour. But the talk of “Two Russias” and of the Russian masses as paradigms of Homo Sovieticus, and as fundamentally non-European, actually confirms the claims of Russian civilizationists that they are in fact distinct. And this is potentially deeply dangerous. For, if you keep telling Russians that they are an archaic, dark, non-European people, they may turn around and say, “In that case to hell with Europe and everything it stands for.” And if you insist that they are Orcs, and also insist on treating them as such, well, they may decide that Orcs is what they will be.