Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0391/03915.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 22KB | 370 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03915}
$Pretitle{295}
$Title{Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Chapter 8B.   Personal Relations}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Thomas D. Roberts}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{values
soviet
children
parents
communist
group
often
generally
collective
family}
$Date{1972}
$Log{}
Country:     Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Book:        Soviet Union, A Country Study
Author:      Thomas D. Roberts
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1972

Chapter 8B.   Personal Relations

     Other persons are generally conceived of as good and trustworthy. Thus
they can be approached openly, the valued manner. Closeness and intimacy are
valued in personal relationships, within the family, and between friends.
Friendship is generally close and confined to relatively few persons; Soviets
do not care to have diffuse, but shallow relationships.

     The long period of political repression and purges had its effect on
personal relations. Seeming friends might turn out to be police informers and,
if a person was arrested, his friends and family might also be implicated. A
great deal of suspicion and caution was the inevitable result. In general,
however, people continued to maintain close friendships whenever they could.
Since the mid-1950s, friendship has resumed a more normal course.

     Although the people are conscious of status differences among individuals
as well as differences in life style and education, they nevertheless value
those who, without being condescending, act in an egalitarian manner. The
underlying concept is a feeling that all belong to one family, or collective.
A feeling of belonging gives the individual security and results also in the
typically unselfconscious behavior. There is thus no need for pretense or
excessive formality. The long period of peasant experience in collectives,
first in the mir and later in the kolkhoz, and the feeling of sobornost
(community spirit) generated by the Russian Orthodox church have also
contributed to the sense of belonging.

     On the whole, people are tolerant of personal differences except where
they affect the group. If an individual does not care for another, the latter
is generally ignored. Zeal, formerly for religion, but later for communism,
has sometimes modified the pattern of tolerance, resulting in a tendency
toward inflexibility.

     During the tsarist period, relations between men and women were generally
characterized as patriarchal, especially among the peasants, who constituted
an overwhelming majority of the population. Among the aristocrats and the
small class of intellectuals, more egalitarian relations prevailed. The
Revolution brought with it an egalitarian ideal, stressing the emancipation
of women (see ch. 11, Family). Necessity has brought this ideal close to
realization. In a family that can afford to let the husband be the sole wage
earner, there exists a tendency for the woman to assume a more traditional
role as wife and mother; in most cases, however, patriarchy has disappeared
and, although the husband may take a leading role, his wife plays a close
second.

     Children have generally been expected to respect their parents and other
adults, especially the elderly. Often they would be raised by an old
grandmother (babushka) and the old men controlled the mir. Law in tsarist
times gave fathers nearly absolute control over their children. As in so
many aspects of life, the period immediately following the Bolshevik
Revolution represented a temporary, but drastic change. Children were
expected to view their parents with suspicion as being potentially hostile to
the regime; parental authority was minimized (see ch. 11, Family).

     Subsequent developments stressed the necessity that children respect
their parents. The work of A.S. Makarenko, a Soviet pedagogue, made a point
of this. He also stressed the importance of parental responsibility toward
children. Parents should teach their children by example and precept rather
than by punishment, but, on the other hand, they should not spoil them.
Indulgence of children tends to be a common adult response, however, although
most parents conscientiously attempt to follow expert advice.

     The rapid changes that have taken place in society during the last
fifty years have produced great changes in the relations between children
and adults. Parents are often viewed as old fashioned or as out of touch with
current realities; even when they are regarded with respect, their opinions
may not always count for much.

Individual and Society

     Strong group loyalty and identification result from the Russian sense
of belonging. Peasants have always been loyal to their villages, often out of
necessity. In an industrial context group loyalty and identification still
prevail. The regime has used these characteristics to promote production by
appealing to group sentiment and by promising group rewards or penalties.

     Marxist thought emphasized the importance of the mass-the workingmen's
collectives. Such concepts readily found fertile soil for growth in
postrevolutionary Russia. Individuals are supposed to act for the good of the
collective. The raising and education of children are designed to encourage
collective sensibilities. Official pronouncements have occasionally made
individuals seem but cogs in some vast machine. On the whole, however, the
tone of official exhortations and pedagogical works has had a tone familiar
in Western morality. Individuals are urged not to be selfish, but to consider
other people, and to work for the good of all people. The collective seems
to be viewed, not as an undifferentiated mass, but as a group of persons.

     Nevertheless, the peer group, or the collective, and the individual's
relationship to it receive much attention. Social sanctions in factory and
school groups are carried out by a process of group shaming, in which the
deviant individual is pressed by all members to consider his faults and to do
better. This singling out from the group is uncomfortable for the individual,
who derives a sense of security from belonging to the group. Sanctions in the
old village collective followed the same pattern. Russian Orthodoxy also
emphasized the common sharing of religious experience as truly human and truly
Christian.

     Soviet behavior in public and typical friendship patterns are highly
individualistic. Individuals seem generally unconscious of other persons in
public places. They show no need to seem amiable and often appear rude or
unconscious of others. Friends are chosen because they seem interesting and
compatible. In the most crowded of housing conditions, individuals are still
able to maintain a sense of privacy or individuality.

     But the person who is too withdrawn and seems too much concerned with
himself and his own feelings is considered antisocial. This conception, which
receives endorsement from official values, also forms the basis for the
government's policies toward the arts. Both romanticism and abstraction in the
arts have been considered to be too individualistic, too concerned with
private sensations to the detriment of society. Abstract and impressionistic
visual painting and sculpture, lyric poetry and psychological novels, and
nontonal music have been shunned for realistic art, tonal music, and
literature stressing the collective. Part of these reactions have also
resulted from lack of sophistication, for prerevolutionary Russia was in the
forefront of the arts (see ch. 16, Artistic Expression).

     Ideally, leaders, especially those in the highest positions, should
be models for those below them and should personify the official virtues.
Thus, they should be stronger and more humane, sympathetic, unselfish,
unselfconscious, dedicated, and honest. Soviet citizens evince the most
respect for leaders who are both strong and humane; in his day, Stain was so
conceived by official literature.

     Soviet egalitarianism requires that the leaders be distant from the mas