Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man

An emigre Russian historian offers an in-depth critical analysis of Soviet life that discusses the ways in which the Soviet regime controls the Soviet people--in education, culture, the workplace, ideology, and language

Unlike hardened anti-Communist cold warriors, Heller avoids ideological mudslinging. His portrayal of the Soviet Union as an unfree society, one where each individual becomes a small cell in a vast organism, is devastating and convincing. A Sorbonne instructor who coauthored Utopia in Power, Heller insists that the Soviet state's overriding goal is the same as it was under Lenin and Stalin: shaping "human raw material" into obedient, passive cogs in a machine. Today in the U.S.S.R., he notes, all references to the Bible and the Jewish people have been removed from school texts; women do the heaviest physical work and bear most of the family's burdens but have practically no voice; men act as capricious boys, working off their feelings of powerlessness by abusing their wives. Heller's surprising expose of Gorbachev's touched-up Stalinist vocabulary is brilliant. This is one of the best books ever written on the making of Homo sovieticus and the dilemmas of the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This remarkable and unsettling book interprets Soviet rule as a consistent effort towards "creation of the New Man," an obediently selfless cog. Heller's claim is supported by his incomparable knowledge of Soviet political and literary sources. Enduring parallels emerge between Soviet policy and the work of Zamyatin and Orwell, and they emerge in most areas of Soviet lifethe apotheosis of the plan, a mystical belief in Marxism-Leninism, and language used as a semiological system. The scope and power of Heller's version of totalitarianism is controversial; its scholarly value lies in exposing the Stalinist bedrock of the Soviet system and its erosion through information technology. Nevertheless, the book's apparent completion before the full extent of Gorbachev's innovations leaves begging the question of his impact and success. Recommended for all libraries with larger Soviet collections. Zachary T. Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.