The Origins of the Soviet Person: The Anthropological Dimension of October 1917 as Perceived by Menshevik Social Democrats

Abstract

This article is devoted to the ideological heritage of post-October Menshevism. The author aims to analyse the perception of social processes in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1922 by Menshevik social democrats. The methodological approaches of this article are based on the principles of new social history. The analysis relies on the materials of a multi-volume series of documents on the history of Menshevism published by the International Working Group of scholars headed by Ziva Galili and Albert Nenarokov between the 1990s and 2000s. The author also uses some personal letters of Mensheviks deposited at the Hoover Institution Archive on War, Revolution and Peace (Stanford, USA). Referring to the research carried out, the author concludes that it was the Mensheviks who were among the first to write about the specific characteristics of the society that emerged in Soviet Russia. Their personal letters and articles contained deep analyses of social transformations taking place among Russian workers and intellectuals, as well as the values and psychological attitudes of these social groups. Menshevik social democrats described the formation of a new Soviet person, and their specific psychology. As early as by the beginning of the 1920s, the Mensheviks had concluded that it would be very difficult for the democratic opposition to organise propaganda activity in the new Soviet society.