Homo Sovieticus (Dog Latin for "Soviet Man") is a sarcastic and critical reference to an average conformist person in the Soviet Union also observed in other countries of the Eastern Bloc. The term was popularized by Soviet writer and sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev, who wrote the book titled Homo Sovieticus. A similar term in Russian slang is sovok (совок, plural: sovki, совки), which is derived from "Soviet" Russian, literally meaning a "scoop (tool)". In a book published in 1981, but available in samizdat in the 1970s, Zinovyev also coined an abbreviation homosos (гомосос).