Soviet Syndrome

As idealized by Soviet propaganda, the New Soviet Man comes equipped with iron will and brass nerve. But Social Psychologists Helen Beier and Raymond Bauer, two members of a Harvard team that interviewed several hundred Soviet refugees, believe that the much-touted toughness is often a thin veneer, particularly among the "Golden Youth" of the new Soviet upper classes. In The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Beier and Bauer present a case history: 30-year-old Oleg, an intellectual who fled to the West.

Oleg, a writer's son, grew up in a sheltered city home. His parents were silently opposed to the Communist regime, but at school Oleg became a fanatic young Pioneer and an ardent Stalin fan. As he grew older, his parents gradually opened his eyes. Despite his new doubts Oleg said later: "I wanted to believe."

Russia's initial defeats in World War II further weakened his faith in Stalin's infallibility. He tried his hand at creative writing, but lacked the determination to stick to it. He decided to climb aboard the party bandwagon.

At a Red army intelligence school for foreign agents he became an accomplished double-thinker. "I thought that I would go along with [the party] only until a given moment," he said. "Other people [were] sucked in for good." Sent to Austria with the Red army, he promptly defected to the West.

Oleg, say the Harvard psychologists, is essentially one of the stereotypes of czarist days: the ambitious but passive dreamer. The Soviet upper class is acquiring the same sheltered, privileged life as the czarist nobility. If present trends continue, the ranks of the Red aristocracy will be filled with more and more green-tinged Golden Youths like Oleg.

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