Soviet Theory of the People’s Role and the Personality in the Khrushchev Era

The "new thinking" that emerged during the Gorbachev era extended beyond politics and economics, reaching into the sphere of ideology-with "new humanism" at its cornerstone.The chief proponents of this shift were the so-called shestidesiatniki (the "sixties generation"), though their intellectual outlook was deeply informed by the preceding generation of Soviet intelligentsia .Yet, existing scholarly analyses of the philosophical milieu of the 1950s-1960s fall short of fully accounting for the foundations and trajectory of Soviet philosophical thought during this period .In fact, after the ascendancy and eventual waning of theories on the "role of the people" and the "role of personalities in history" in the 1950s, debate intensified from the late 1950s onwards regarding the personality of individuals tasked with constructing a Communist society .This paper traces the evolution of the theory of the personality, which came to the fore in the "new humanist" discourse of the Gorbachev era .This analysis draws on contemporary philosophical literature to illuminate this intellectual trajectory .