VADIM BELOTSERKOVSKY
43
concepts of human psychology held by many Soviet people including
the intellectuals . The Soviet years have put their mark on this
discipline perhaps more deeply than on any other. Freud 's teachings,
the basis of contemporary psychology, were and still are determinedly
suppressed. The works of Freud and many other "bourgeois" psy–
chologists are not published in Russian and are given out in libraries
only by special "permission!" The result is that many people have no
real idea of the complexity and multiplicity of the human psyche, and
judge people only at the uppermost level of their consciousness which
is directly conditioned by external circumstances and by the need for
adaptation . People often lack the capacity to identify with others, to
understand their circumstances. Responsiveness is blunted. One
would have to share too many bitter experiences .
Russian society can be regarded as divisible into six layers or
categories (accepting a certain unavoidable arbitrariness) :
1.
The ruling oligarchy
2 .
The scientific intelligentsia
3. The humanistic intelligentsia
4. Engineers and factory workers
5. The
p~asantry
6. Petty service and trade employees, including workers and
technicians in those fields . (Hereafter these will be referred to collec–
tively as the "sixth layer. ")
One could , of course , separate the engineers from the factory
workers and combine them, in a more conventional way, with the
scientists . But we believe that this would not correspond to the true
facts . Given the acceleration and expansion in the numbers of
engineers and technicians and their cruel exploitation on the same
level as that of the workers (or even worse), these two groups have
merged and become almost one, with almost identical interests and
characteristics. Simultaneously, this broad and ever growing layer of
engineers and technicians contributes to the intellectualization of the
body of factory workers and transforms it into an independent force
which, hopefully, will become a base for democracy in the future.
I believe that the category of " engineers and factory workers"
has , by now, very little in common with the peasantry and even less
