In these days I am reading Personality and Perestroika, a now-forgotten, but a very brilliant book by one late soviet psychologist Akhmed Ismailovich Kitov (1928-2005). Why, you can ask with an irony, such an anachronistic title drew my attention? Yes, I thought the same when I saw it in one bookseller’s. But a few glances at its content made me change my opinion – it seems that I do not suffer an inertness of thought which is “neither positive, nor negative” according to Professor Kitov, “if we are to evaluate it out of specific historical context”. (Thus I have a flexible thinking and that is why my motto is courage in change, or IN MUTATIONE FORTITUDO).
Throughout the book an analysis of the Perestroika, its problems and challenges, its friends, companions and enemies are closely interlaced with honest and ardent criticism of the Soviet society and economy. The author gives a detailed and often comparative analysis of the errors and defects of the Soviet system, and evaluates the whole 73 years of Soviet policies. After reading the first 36 pages of this book, my impression is that has it been published in 1970 or 1980, not in 1990, the Soviet Union would overcome most of its problems in a more swift and virtuous way, than the Chinese did with theirs and USSR could be even saved from dissolution. Thus who knows, maybe today in a political map of the world we would find the words “Soviet Union” and no-one would know who Francis Fukuyama is (as he won’t write his “the End of History”)?
It is also a very good source on Perestroika's psychological aspects.
I have read only the first 36 pages yet (and looked through others), but my copy of 1990 edition (the only by the way) is heavily marked with pencil, and I’ve already highlighted many valuable remarks. But as my translation skills are somehow poor from Russian to English, so let me give only two easily translatable quotations from this book, which haven’t lost their actuality even now:
“… [A]n assault on individual property is perceived by a person as an assault on his personality… [and] defenseless condition of individual property makes an individual’s economic activities meaningless: a person won’t multiple his own goods by his own labour unless he is sure that nobody can deprive him of them…” (Page 23)
“Our ideal of a manager (leader) is still of a “chieftain” kind. We think that a manager should be more superior to his people in all relations: he should know technology better than an engineer he employs, he should know the economy better than his economic adviser, and he should know the public policy better than a party functionary… This “chieftain” stereotype mirrors in the minds of the managers and forms a psychology of infallibility, irreplaceable, permissiveness, and arrogance and personal ambitions in them. We should deconstruct these personal cults and “chieftain” stereotypes and make people understand that a manager is just an ordinary specialist who can organize people’s collective labour better than others, and he needn’t excel them in everything.” (Page 30-31)
Reading this book, I once again feel regret that many great books unduly sink into oblivion, but many other slapdash works survive the history, even though they really do not deserve this : (((
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