The Soviet person: propaganda or reality?

In modern Russia the problem of the search for a national idea more often requires from researchers and politicians the comprehension of the recent past of the country, and the concept of the Soviet identity and its specific manifestation - the Soviet person - are inseparably connected with it. An important role in formation the new, unprecedented by their characteristics type of people was assigned to the state propaganda, by which the special system of the ideologems, symbols and images was created. Could the real Soviet people conform to it? How were they indeed? Considering all the specialties of the propaganda, it is necessary not only to identify the Soviet citizens' identity features, but to try to understand: how they were ready (or were not ready) to the main ideological mission - communism - which was entrusted on them by the state, and why the system had ceased to exist and society had come to the other result. The researching of the Soviet identity also has a sociological meaning, because its elements are saved today as nostalgia or as the deeper mental attitudes, including moral values, traditions and stereotypes of the internal and foreign policy worldview of the society. Among the plurality of sources, for this subject conversational interviews with the representatives of the older generation, who lived and worked in the Soviet Union, have a particular importance. One of such interviews forms the basis of this article.

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