Humanizing Soviet Communication: Social-Psychological Training in the Late Socialist Period

Abstract

Business trainings are not a post-Soviet phenomenon but developed within the Soviet Union beginning in the mid-1970s. The social-psychological training was an interactive method of cultivating communication skills that drew on western methodologies but adapted them to Soviet conditions. It is now considered one of the key sites for the birth of a new practical psychology that encompassed psychotherapy in the late socialist period. While often framed as a scientific intervention into individual communication skills, trainings acquired additional meanings in the Soviet context. For many trainers, transforming language became a way of transforming Soviet social relations without targeting the entire Soviet system. Trainings created a space for reforming the impersonal, distanced registers of “official” Soviet life and imbuing them with more “human” attention to people's emotions, intentions, and individuality.