It has been alleged that the feeling for kollektiv, "the notion of a physical, supernatural unity generated by communal life — in … any group endowed with a common purpose, mutual trust, and empathetic unity" is as old as anything in recorded Russian social history (J. McLeish, Soviet psychology: History, theory, content. London: Methuen, 1975. P. 26). It should be no surprise that it is a salient issue in Soviet social psychology, given its postrevolutionary impetus in the work of A. S. Makarenko ([The road to life] (2nd ed.). Moscow: "Inostrannaia literatura," 1951) with the groups of homeless children entrusted to his care, and the subsequent emphasis on the collective in countless contexts of Soviet work and life.