Intellectual efforts to understand post-Crimean Russian society have brought to prominence explanations that emphasize psychological and attitudinal legacies of Soviet society. The recent revival of the term homo sovieticus (or Soviet man) in the media and intellectual discourse is a good illustration of this trend. Yurii Levada's late-Soviet sociological research project on the “simple Soviet man” serves as a frequent reference point in these discussions. In this article, I explore the ideological and analytical foundations of the Levada project and juxtapose the sociological construct developed by Levada and his team with the interpretative approach developed by Natalya Kozlova, another Soviet scholar who dedicated her life to studying Soviet society. I argue that essentialist and deterministic views of individual personality underpinning the Levada project that guide the current use of the Soviet man category are more politically and ideologically driven rather than being based on the state of the art in social psychology.

中文翻译：

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有一个“简单的苏联”人吗？辩论“苏维埃人”的政治和社会学

理解后克里米亚俄罗斯社会的智力努力已经突出强调苏联社会的心理和态度遗产的解释。最近这个词的复兴苏维埃人（或苏联人）在媒体和知识分子的话语中很好地说明了这一趋势。尤里·列瓦达（Yurii Levada）关于“简单的苏联人”的苏联晚期社会学研究项目经常成为这些讨论的参考点。在本文中，我探讨了列瓦达项目的意识形态和分析基础，并将列瓦达及其团队开发的社会学建构与另一位致力于研究苏联社会的苏联学者娜塔莉亚·科兹洛娃（Natalya Kozlova）开发的解释方法并列。我认为，作为指导当前使用苏联男性类别的 Levada 项目的基础论和确定论的个人人格观点，更多的是受政治和意识形态驱动，而不是基于社会心理学的最新发展水平。