Authors

Tetiana Klynina¹;  ¹ University of Texas at Austin (USA) / National Aviation University (Ukraine), United States

Discussion

The socio-cultural policy of the USSR was a part of social engineering, the main task of which was the formation of the "Soviet man", a person with a changed mentality and a destroyed identity. The "intelligibility" of social behavior, the way of thinking, the presence of prejudices and superstitions, and the inferiority complex are the main, but not the last, consequences of the actions of the political institutions of the USSR. The geographical termination of the existence of the USSR has nothing to do with mental recovery from it. As an example, the social, cultural, and psychological transformations that Ukrainian (and not only!) society underwent as a result of the actions of the totalitarian communist regime still stand as an obstacle to the democratic progress of Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries.

The proposed performance is interdisciplinary and borders on history, social anthropology, and psychology. The research aims to show how the socio-economic and political conditions of the development of Soviet society (mainly in the example of Ukraine) provoked a certain manner of behavior/friendship/communication between people during Soviet times. The Holodomor, the KGB, censorship, etc., have developed a certain protective model of behavior in society, which (provided that such a model is followed) should "protect" (or reduce the probable risks of) a person from the "communist system". That is, such behavior was supposed to guarantee safety, although safety as such was not guaranteed. Not being able to openly oppose such a system, people began to use a certain informal toolkit, "warning signals" in the form of established sayings, superstitions, proverbs, etc. ("My house is from the edge", "Happiness loves silence", "Silence is golden", "Walls have ears", "Don't touch (food), it's for a holiday", "Initiative is punished", etc.). These "signals" spread within Soviet families without any particular explanation, thereby producing permanence and successive use by subsequent generations.