ABSTRACT
The Soviet leadership and the country's social scientists are largely in agreement that a qualitatively new constitution of Soviet society must emerge as part of perestroika. When the question is raised what criteria will measure a given degree of this "new quality," or what the ultimate goals of a new social policy may be, one finds gaps in the consensus, and insofar as there are texts to be consulted, differences in principle. The state of emergency and the belief in the higher qualities of "Soviet man" hammered in over decades have left their traces in the consciousness of a large part of the population. The Soviet scientist E. Maiminas has coined the expression the "socio-economic genotype of the Soviet man." The concept of the "new class" and further critical descriptions of the Soviet system have usually been limited to the system of privileges for members of the nomenclatura and other functionaries.
