Communist Socialization and Post-Communist
Economic and Political Attitudes
Grigore Pop-Eleches
Princeton University
[email protected]
Joshua A. Tucker
New York University
[email protected]
April, 2012
Abstract: In post-communist countries it is now widely held that transition did *not* usher in a
"blank slate", but rather that communist-era legacies continue to play an important role in politics
in post-communist countries. However, most attempts to demonstrate such legacy effects tend to
be ad hoc and specific to individual studies. In our paper, we lay out an easily replicable method
that interacts country-specific histories with the various types of communism (e.g., reformist,
Stalinist, neo-Stalinist, etc.) that were in place in when individuals were in school (ages 6-17)
and then throughout the rest of their adult lives. This method allows us to conduct cross-national
comparisons of the effects of communist era socialization on political attitudes in postcommunist countries. We then test the effects of this communist era socialization on attitudes
towards democracy and capitalism.
Paper prepared for presentation at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, Princeton University,
May 9, 2012. A previous version of this paper was presented at the conference on “Beyond political
socialization: New approaches in age, period, cohort analysis” at Nuffield College, Oxford University,
March 16-17 2012. All statistical analysis conducted using Stata 11.
I. Introduction
Does the experience of living through communism affect the political attitudes and
behavior of citizens in post-communist countries, and if so, how would we know if this was the
case? Although intuitively we would expect the answer to the first question to be affirmative,
the second question raises a number of more difficult follow-up questions: How do we conceive
of more or less communist exposure? How do we differentiate exposure to Stalinism from
exposure to perestroika? Despite a few recent contributions (Neundorf 2010 and Pop-Eleches
and Tucker 2011, 2012), the topic remains largely underexplored. Nevertheless, as more and
more studies of post-communist politics reject the tabula rasa approach to post-communism and
point to the importance of taking account of what was left behind by communism (Bunce 1999;
Kitschelt et al. 1999; Grymala-Busse 2002, 2006; Ekiert and Hanson 2003; Tucker 2006;
Wittenberg 2006; Pop-Eleches 2007), it becomes increasingly important that we be able to
account for the role of communist legacies in affecting political attitudes and behavior as well.
With this larger goal as motivation, in this manuscript we investigate the more tractable
question of the effect of individual exposure to communism on support for democracy and
capitalism. Communism represented perhaps the most systematic challenge in human history to
both of these approaches to the organization of politics and the economy, respectfully. In
Section 3, we lay out two general ways of thinking about how exposure to communism might
therefore affect attitudes towards democracy and capitalism: indoctrination, whereby more
exposure to communism would lead to more opposition to democracy and capitalism, and
resistance, whereby more exposure to communism would lead to more support for democracy
and capitalism. A priori, we are inclined to find the former of these more intuitively plausible,
but we want to explicitly acknowledge the latter as an alternative.
1
To test either of these hypotheses, however, we need a way to measure “exposure” to
communism, and for this we need a theory of what exposure actually matters. We suggest two
theoretical arguments are particularly germane. First, it may be the case that exposure to
communism may simply be a cumulative experience: the longer one lives under communism, the
more “exposure” one has to the communism stimuli (Pop-Eleches and Tucker 2011, 2012). Thus
any effect that we posit is due to living under communism rule ought to be stronger in
individuals who lived more years under communist rule. Alternatively, socialization theory
(Cambell et al.1960; Greenstein 1965; Langton and Jennings 1968; Jennings and Markus 1984)
suggests that citizens pick up many of their political values and attitudes at a relatively young
age as they are entering adulthood. So from this vantage point exposure to communism ought
not to be measured in terms of years spent living under communism, but rather in terms of
whether one came of age politically under communism. It is also worth noting that communism
was clearly not a monolithic experience: we might very well expect the effect of being socialized
under a hardline Stalinist communist regime to be different from being socialized under a
perestroika-era reformist regime. So we will want to think of an individual’s cumulative and
socialization exposure to communism not just to a communist regime in toto, but also to different
types of communist regimes (which will vary both cross-nationally and within countries over
time).
We proceed as follows. In Section 2, we present our cohort periodization of the
communist experience. In Section 3, we then elaborate on our theoretical expectations for how
communist era exposure ought to affect attitudes towards democracy and the market. In Section
4, we present our data from the Post-Communist Publics (PCP) surveys and explain our
2
econometric techniques – including our identification strategies – in more detail before
presenting results in Section 5. We offer some concluding observations in Section 6.
2. Cross-national Political Cohorts of Communism
As noted previously, “communism” was not a monolithic experience across countries and
over time. To put this most starkly, we might expect that someone who came of political age in
Moscow under Stalinism in the early 1950s to have been socialized into somewhat different
political preferences than someone who came of age under Gorbachev’s perestroika. With this in
mind, Table 1 breaks down the communist experience into five subcategories that represent
different “types” of communist experiences. As with any attempt at classification, we face a
trade-off between level of detail, comparability, and parsimony. Thus we do not mean to claim
that Stalinism in Albania in the 1980s was exactly the same thing as Stalinism in Romania in the
early 1950s, but at the same time we hope that the classification scheme represents a useful first
step in identifying different types of communist-era experiences.1
-- INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE --
Our five-fold classification scheme works as follows.2 First, we consider the initial years
in which countries were in the process of installing communist systems of government. The next
category is the Stalinist period, essentially the high-water mark of communist orthodoxy and
repression. With the exception of Albania, the communist countries then all moved beyond
1
Much to our surprise we have not been able to find a comparable categorization scheme in earlier work and would
greatly appreciate any references to similar endeavors by other scholars, especially potentially scholars outside of
the political science field of whom we might not be aware.
2
We thank Andrew Janos for comments and suggestions regarding this classification scheme.
3
Stalinism, and we break down these “post-Stalinist experiences” into three categories. “PostStalinist Hardline” refers to regimes that moved beyond Stalinism, but essentially still pursued
hardline policies (e.g., low dissent tolerance, an active repressive state apparatus but without
widespread terror, active security services, etc.). “Post-Totalitarianism” builds on Linz and
Stepan (1996), and refers communist regimes where the communist monopoly on power was still
in place, but true believers in the ideology were few are far between, with most party members
now associating with the party for careerist as opposed to ideological reasons. Post-Totalitarian
regimes are also known for the tacit trade-off of political power for economic security; limited
pluralism was tolerated so long as the state was not directly targeted. Finally, Reformist
communism refers to periods like the Prague Spring, Gorbachev’s perestroika, Poland’s various
flirtations with greater political openness and independent trade unions like Solidarity, etc.
Of course, in addition to the five periods identified with communism in Table 1, we can
also add two additional time periods: pre-communism and post-communism. Thus, for our older
respondents from East-Central Europe, we can also calculate how many years they lived under
pre-communist rule and if they were educated under a pre-communist system. Similarly, some
of our younger respondents will have come of age in the post-communist era, and most of our
respondents will have lived some portion of their lives under post-communism.3
3. Communism, the Market, and Democracy
Our overarching theoretical goal is to better understand variation how exposure to
communism affects attitudes towards democracy and the market. More specifically, we are
interested in exploring the variation in the extent to which post-communist citizens prefer
democracy to other forms of government (Almond and Verba 1965; Bratton et al. 2008; Dalton
3
The exceptions are citizens of Soviet republics interviewed in 1990.
4
2009; Evans and Whitefield 2009; Kitschelt 1992; Przeworski 1991; Rose et al. 1998) 4 and
whether citizens prefer a market based economy (“capitalism”) or not (Duch 1993; Earle and
Gehlbach 2003; Fidrmuc 2000; Hayo 2004; Kitschelt 1992; Przeworski 1991).5
We expect exposure to communism to affect attitudes towards democracy and the market
because communism arguably represented the most systematic and long-lived challenge to the
economic and political model of Western liberalism. Politically, communist regimes were either
de jure or at least de facto one-party regimes,6 led by a Marxist-Leninist political party whose
organization was closely intertwined – and often fused – with the state apparatus. While the role
and nature of ideology varied across both time and space among the countries of the Soviet bloc,
the efforts to reshape individuals and society along ideological lines, and the central role of the
Party in these efforts, were much more prominent in communist regimes than in the noncommunist world (democratic and authoritarian alike). Furthermore, there was much greater
penetration of all levels of society by communist regimes compared to other authoritarian
regimes. Even beyond the infamous mass “reeducation” campaigns and purges of Stalinism, the
deep penetration of society by extensive networks of secret police agents and informers led to an
unprecedented degree of state control over the daily lives (and thoughts) of individuals.7
4
For more on preferences for democracy, see as well Almond and Verba (1989); Evans and Whitefield
(1993);Gibson et al. (1992); Graham and Sukhtankar (2004); Lagos (2001), and Sil and Chen (2004). Note as well
the difference between a preference for democracy (as opposed to other political systems) as opposed to satisfaction
with the way democracy is functioning in one’s country. As many an Occupy Wall Street protester will confirm,
one can very well prefer democracy to other forms of rule while at the same time be dissatisfied with the quality or
performance of democracy in one’s country at the present. We consider the former to be more of a fundamental
preference, while the latter is more of an evaluation (see Pop-Eleches and Tucker, nd, Chapter 2, for much more
details in this regard). See, for example, Neundorf (2010), for a study of the effect of communist legacies on
satisfaction with democracy.
5
For more on attitudes towards particular aspects of market-based economies, see McCarty et al. 2006; Kitschelt
1992; Linz and Stepan 1996.
6
A few countries, like East Germany and Poland nominally allowed the existence of multiple parties but such
parties were expected – and very consistently fulfilled the expectations – to toe the official party line.
7
Of course the aggressiveness and effectiveness of such efforts varied widely across time, space and sector (Jowitt
1992) – arguably peaking during the Great Terror of the 1930s in the Soviet Union and in the first post-war decade
in Eastern Europe – and while we will analyze the implications of such intra-regional variation throughout the book,
5
Economically, communist countries were set apart from the non-communist world by the
central role of the state in the economy. While extensive state intervention in the economy
(including in some cases prominent roles for state-owned enterprises in many key sectors) also
featured prominently in some West European democracies and in the import-substituting
industrialization (ISI) models prevalent in many developing countries until the early 1980s,
Communist countries nevertheless stood out in their systematic suppression of private enterprise
and in their heavy reliance on central planning, which produced a very different economic logic
and a series of typically communist pathologies (Kornai 1992). Again, important variations in
the scope and nature of the state’s economic control existed within the Soviet bloc,8 and in the
1980s there were significant differences in the extent to which communist governments
embraced Gorbachev’s limited economic reform efforts. But despite such differences, as late as
1989 the share of the private sector in overall economic output varied surprisingly little in most
of communist Eastern Europe and Eurasia, largely ranging from about 5% in most Soviet
Republics, Czechoslovakia and Albania to 15% in most of the Yugoslav Republics9 (EBRD
2008). In addition, true to its ideological aspirations of promoting social and political equality
among its citizens, communist regimes left behind more equal societies and more expansive
welfare states than their non-communist counterparts.
Thus to the extent that any given individual chose to adapt the political and economic
perspective of the communist regimes that ruled in East-Center Europe and the former Soviet
Union, we would expect her to be opposed to democracy and the market; this much certainly in
for the purpose of the present discussion what matters is that (with the partial exception of the late Gorbachev years)
communist regimes never abandoned this basic model of societal control.
8
The most prominent outlier was Yugoslavia’s “socialist self-management,” where enterprises were technically
owned and controlled by workers’ councils (albeit with a great degree of interference from the Party).
9
The only partial outlier was Poland, where the private sector in 1989 accounted for 30% of the economy, largely
because of the partial failure of large-scale collectivization of agriculture.
6
not controvertible. So if we adopt the assumption that greater exposure to communism – all else
being equal – ought to lead individuals to be more likely to express the perspective of the
communist regimes, then we would expect that the more exposed an individual was to
communism (in any of the various ways we might think about “exposure” as discussed in the
previous section), the more likely he or she would be to oppose democracy or the market.
Two issues must be addressed, however, that will complicate this initially very
parsimonious hypothesis. The first is that communism is not monolithic. So if the basis for our
empirical predictions rests in the idea that more of an exposure to communism will lead one to
adapt views that are more in line those propagated by communist regimes (i.e., anti-democracy
and anti-market), we might expect this effect to vary based on the – for lack of a better word –
“intensity” of the communist system to which one is being exposed. In this respect, we propose
the following loose rankings in order of “intensity”: Stalinist > post-Stalinist hardliners > posttotalitarian communism > reform communism. Therefore, we would expect the evidence in
support of basic hypothesis – that exposure to communism leads one to be anti-market and antidemocracy – to be strongest when we consider exposure to communism in Stalinist or postStalinist hardline regime and weakest when we consider exposure to reform communism. To
give an example, if we are testing the socialization approach to communist exposure, we would
expect to find people who were socialized under Stalinist regimes to be more anti-market and
anti-democracy than those who were socialized reformist regimes. Importantly, our method
allows us to test exactly this contention.
Our second complication concerns not the type of communism, but the actual effect of
communism on attitudes. Heretofore, we have considered the effect of exposure to communism
to be mainly an indoctrinating or imprinting one: more exposure to communism leads to
7
attitudes that are in greater congruence with the ideals of communism. However, it may be the
case that we have this completely wrong: perhaps more exposure to communism actually leads to
more resistance to the ideas of communism, precisely because life under communism could be
so brutal and repressive. This type of perspective might explain someone who came of age under
Gorbachev’s perestroika thinking that perhaps a return to autocracy might be appealing – after
all, perestroika-era communism was not really all that repressive – whereas someone who lived
through Stalinist era purges might be convinced that democracy is sacrosanct because it is the
only reliable bulwark against totalitarian terrors. Thus, it is possible that the more intuitive
predictions, with which we began this section, could actually be reversed. Table 2, therefore,
concisely summarizes our various expectations.
-
INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE --
4. Data and Methods
To test these hypotheses we use data from the Post-Communist Publics (PCP) Study. The
PCP study consists of two waves of surveys (1990-2 and 1998-2001) and was administered in
twelve ex-communist countries for the first wave and in fourteen ex-communist countries plus
West Germany for the second wave. All told, therefore, we have surveys that take place in seven
different years across 14 countries (see Table A1 for full coverage details). In addition to the
individual-level survey data, we collected data on economic performance and democracy scores
for each of the 26 country-years for which we had survey data. We then merged these indicators
with the individual-level survey data to construct a multi-level data set.
4.2 Indicators
4.2.1 Dependent variables
8
To test the impact of socialization on a broad range of outcomes that could be reasonably
affected by the experience of communism, we use two indices, one measuring support for
democracy and the other for capitalism. Our democratic support index is composed of five
questions that asked about the desirability of elections for choosing authorities, the need for
political parties and parliament, whether democracy would solve or worsen the country’s
problems and the relative desirability of one-party and multi-party systems for the country. Our
pro-capitalism variable, in contrast, focuses on the extent to which post-communist citizens
embraced or rejected the nascent capitalist systems that replaced the socialist command
economies after 1989. The index captures the extent to which respondents continue to associate
capitalism with inequality, selfishness, repression, and corruption (as it had been portrayed for
decades by communist propaganda) or whether the embraced it as the best economic system for
their country, and as being capable of helping solve their country’s problems. Both variables
were defined in such a way that higher values indicate greater rejection of the communist system
and its components. Therefore, while the magnitude of the regression coefficients for the
socialization indicators is not comparable across models (because the DVs are not standardized)
the sign of the coefficients is consistent across models: thus, for the communist socialization
variables, positive effects indicate a rejection of the communist model and suggest that
communist socialization primarily triggered resistance, whereas negative effects indicate a
continued embrace of communist values and therefore indicate successful imprinting. For details
about the wording of the survey questions, see Table A2 in the electronic appendix.
4.2.2 Independent variables
9
Our primary independent variables are the various measures of exposure to communism
that have been described in greater detail in the previous two sections; we incorporate these
measures into our analyses sequentially. Thus he first set of regressions in Table 3 simply
captures the number of years a respondent has spent living under communism after the age of 6.
These tests will provide the baseline assessment of the cumulative socialization effect of
communism. In Table 4, we disaggregate the communism experience into our four different
types of communism (Stalinist, Neo-Stalinist, Post-Totalitarian, and Reform), and our variables
accordingly measure the number of years spent living under each type of communism. In Table
5, we disaggregate exposure to communism into early (# of years between age 6-17 living under
communist rule) and adult (# of years aged 18 and up spent living under communism) exposure.
In Table 6, we then apply the early/late disaggregation to our “types” of communism. Thus, we
include indicators of the number of years between the ages of 6-17 under Stalinism, neoStalinism, post-totalitarianism and reformist communism, and of the number of years after the
age of 17 spent by respondents in the same set of regime types.
In addition to the socialization indicators, our regressions include a number of basic
demographic controls: education levels, religious denomination, population size bands of the
respondent's town, and sex. Finally, in order to control for the potential effect of economic and
political conditions on economic and political preferences, the regressions control for inflation,
unemployment and Freedom House democracy levels in the year preceding the survey and for
the average GDP change in the two years prior to the survey.
4.3 Statistical methods
10
For the statistical tests presented in this chapter we use ordinary least squares (OLS)
regressions with robust standard errors clustered at the country-year level. Moreover, all the
regressions use equilibrated survey weights, which combine any within-country survey weights
with a cross-country component that adjusts for sample size differences across countries. While
in future iterations of the paper we will re-run the models using hierarchical linear models to
account for the multi-level nature of the data, we do not expect this to affect the results
significantly, since the main IVs vary at the individual level.
4.4 Identification Strategy
The challenge to assessing the effect of exposure to communism on any attitude in the
post-communist era, is disentangling these socialization effects from other issues, especially age
but also the timing of the survey. For example, if we were to simply find that the citizens in
Russia who had lived the longest under the communist regime were the most opposed to
democracy, we would be unable to distinguish whether this evidence provided support for our
proposed cumulative socialization hypothesis or if it simply reflected the fact that older Russians
at the time of our survey were more opposed to democracy for reasons having nothing to do with
their past experiences of living under communism. This problem is known in the literature as the
“Age-Period-Cohort” effect, whereby the challenge is to identify the “cohort” effect in in a way
which just does not conflate this effect with simply being of a certain age (“age”) at the time of
the survey (“period”) (Glenn 2005; Neundorf 2010).
To deal with this concern, we our regressions include not only the socialization indicators
(described above) but also the age of the respondent (in years) and the year of the survey
(currently a single continuous measure, not year dummies). We therefore get identification of the
11
cohort effect – our substantive interest – both from within-country temporal variation and from
cross-country differences in when communism (or different regime subtypes) started and ended.
By pooling across countries, we also technically have multiple (7) survey years, even though we
only have two for each country. All coefficients on cohorts therefore are estimates controlling
for both age and the year of the survey. Moreover, these are not country-cohort estimates (e.g.,
what is the effect of living through 10 years of Polish communism) but rather general estimates
of the effects of living through communism that draw upon the experiences of people from all 14
of the countries in our data set. Estimating the model in this way is possible precisely because
we have data from multiple countries that had different communist regime types and durations,
and because we have surveys that were conducted in multiple years.
Two caveats about this approach are worth noting. First, there is obviously much greater
variation in the relationship between age and cohort when we estimate the effect of living
through types of communism (see Table 4&6) than when we estimate the effect of simply living
under communist rule (Table 3). Different countries do have different experiences with different
types of communism, and thus a 70 year-old in Slovenia will have spent a very different number
of years living under Stalinist and neo-Stalinist regimes than a 70 year old in East Germany or a
70 year old in Russia. Years simply living under communism are much more highly correlated
with age across the sample, although the two are still not perfectly correlated (.90).
Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is important to note that when we turn to simply
the number of years spent living under communism, there is a near perfect correlation between
age and years spent living under communism among the countries in our sample that were part of
the Soviet Union before World War II (Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus), as all three countries fell
12
under communist rule at the same time.10 This also suggests that a significant part of our
estimate for years spent living under communism will come from the distinction between the
former Soviet republics and the Eastern European countries in the sample. While it is of course
the case that the number of years that older citizens were exposed to communism is an important
factor distinguishing the interwar Soviet republics from the other countries in our sample, it is
certainly not the only factor. Thus we need to be aware that any “years of communism” effect
we identify (even while controlling for age) might simply be picking up other distinctions
between the interwar Soviet republics and the rest of our cases.
To address these concerns, we take the following steps. First, we initially estimate all of
our models using all of the data available. Next we then re-estimate the model with a control for
whether or not the respondent is living in an interwar Soviet republic. Finally, we estimate the
model a third time dropping all of the cases from the interwar Soviet republics.11 Running the
model with and without the interwar Soviet dummy variable gives us a sense of how much of
any cohort effect we identify in the original model may be due to unobservable factors
distinguishing the interwar Soviet countries. Running the model a third time dropping the
interwar Soviet republics assures us that any results we find at that point are in no way a function
of the distinction between the interwar Soviet republics and our other cases. Doing so of course
then leaves us with less variation in age and communist exposure to exploit than if we included
all of the data in a single regression.
10
The only reason that is not a perfect correlation is because we have two different years of surveys for each
country.
11
In addition, in Table 3 we include a specification with interaction terms between the interwar Soviet dummy and
communist socialization but since we find no effect that this interaction is significant, we do not include this
specification in subsequent tables.
13
5. Empirical Results
In line with our earlier discussion, the statistical results in Tables 3-6 present the effects
of communist exposures on democratic and economic values using different degrees of
disaggregation of communist exposure.
Table 3 here
The first set of regressions in Table 3 simply captures the number of years past the age of
six that a respondent has spent under communism. The baseline specification in model 1suggests
that even controlling for the individual and country-level controls described in the previous
section, including age and survey year, individuals with a longer exposure to communism were
less supportive of democratic ideals. This effect was not only highly statistically significant but
fairly large in substantive terms: thus, an additional 30 years lived under communism were
associated with an expected reduction of half a standard deviation in the democratic support
index.
However, model 2 indicates that once we control for whether a respondent lived in one of
the interwar Soviet republics, the magnitude of the effect is reduced by more than half, though it
is still statistically significant. We observe a similar effect when we restrict the analysis to the
East European countries that only experienced 45 years of communism. However, according to
model 4, there is no clear evidence that the effects of communist exposure differ significantly
between East European countries and interwar Soviet republics. Thus, while the effect was
slightly larger in the latter cases, the difference was not statistically significant and quite modest
in substantive terms.
Taken together these findings suggest that while democratic support was lower in the
countries with longer communist histories, the actual effect of communist exposure at the
14
individual level was not different and – more importantly – differences in individual communist
exposure do not seem to explain the overall differences in democratic values across the two types
of countries. The obvious follow-up question is what other aspects of the political dynamics of
inter-war Soviet republics are responsible for this democratic values deficit. One possibility,
which we do not explore in greater detail here, is that pre-WWII communism shaped a variety of
formal and informal institutions to a greater/different extent than the post-war communism that
all countries in our sample experienced.12 Alternatively, it is possible that what matters is not just
the length of communist exposure but also the particular variety of communism in which
individuals were socialized. This possibility is addressed by our analysis of different subtypes of
communism in Tables 4 and 6 but given the modest interaction effect in model 4 it is unlikely to
account for the full negative impact of the pre-WWII communism effect.
Models 5-8 repeat the same set of model specifications for attitudes towards capitalism.
The results are quite similar to those in the first four models, in the sense that both the size and
the statistical significance of the communist exposure effect are significantly reduced once we
control for interwar Soviet republic status, and that once again this difference does not seem to
be due to a differential impact of individual socialization in pre vs. post-WWII communist
regimes. However, the magnitude of the communist exposure effect was smaller in the case of
attitudes towards capitalism (a 30-year difference in communist exposure only corresponded to a
.3 standard deviations change in the pro-capitalism index) and as a result the effect was no longer
statistically significant in models 6-8.
While a more detailed discussion of the other results in Table 3 is omitted due to space
constraints, it is worth noting that the effects of age and year differ significantly across the two
sets of attitudes. Thus, the positive and statistically significant effects of age in models 1-4
12
This hypothesis is addressed in greater detail in our other work (Pop-Eleches and Tucker 2011).
15
suggest that once we control of communist socialization older respondents were actually more
democratic, but the direction of the age effect is reversed in models 5-8 (albeit falling short of
statistical significance) a finding that is in line with the disproportionate costs borne by elderly
individuals during the post-communist economic transition to capitalism. The comparison of
temporal trends also reveals important differences: thus, the positive and at least partially
statistically significant positive effect of survey year in models 2-4 suggests that democratic
commitments solidified over the course of the first post-communist decade but the fact that the
effect was not present in model 1 suggests that this trend was limited to Eastern Europe. By
contrast, the large and statistically significant negative effects of year in models 5,6, and 8
confirm the much more negative experience with post-communist economic liberalization.13
In the tests in Table 4 we relax the rather strong assumption of communism as a uniform
“treatment” that shapes democratic and economic preferences across a broad set of countries and
time periods. We do so by accounting for the number of years past age 6 that a given respondent
spent in any of the four subtypes of communist regimes, whose temporal and geographic
distribution is summarized in Table 1.
Table 4 here
The results in Table 4 confirm the analytical utility of differentiating between sub-types
of communist regimes. With the partial exception of a weaker effect of neo-Stalinism,14 the
differences between communist variants are not particularly large in model 1, where longer
13
The larger size of the effect in model 5 and the lack of an effect in model 7 suggests that this effect was driven by
the inter-war Soviet republics, which is not surprising given the greater economic toll of the transition on these
countries (see e.g. Hellman 1998).
14
The effect of neo-stalinist socialization was just over half the size of its milder post-totalitarian counterpart but the
difference was at best marginally significant (at .11 one-tailed).
16
exposures to all kinds of communist socialization appear to undermine democratic ideals at
roughly the same rate, which, not surprisingly, is quite similar to the overall magnitude of the
communist exposure effect in model 1 of Table 3. However, the differences are more
pronounced in models 2 and 3, where we control for inter-war Soviet membership. Given that
the original Soviet republics had a longer exposure to Stalinism and then post-totalitarian
communism (under Brezhnev) than their East European counterparts, it is not surprising that the
controlling for pre-war communism has a greater impact on the effects of those particular types
of communist regimes. As a result, both models 2 and 3 show that neo-Stalinist and reform
communist are still significant negative predictors of democratic attitudes but the effect of
Stalinist and post-totalitarian regime exposure is virtually erased. Moreover, at least some of the
differences between the subtypes is statistically significant.15
Models 4-6 reveal similar patterns with respect to economic preferences but once again
the results are weaker in both statistical and substantive significance than for democratic
preferences. Thus, neo-Stalinist regimes have the weakest effect in model 4 but once we control
for interwar Soviet membership, the effect is reversed and neo-Stalinist exposure is the only type
that achieves at least marginal statistical significance in model 6 (which restricts the analysis to
the East European cases.) Also, it is worth noting that none of the differences between the
coefficients for regime subtypes are significant in models 2 and 3, which suggests that the
differences across regimes had a greater impact on political than on economic preferences.
In Table 5 we depart from the simple baseline models in Table 3 along a second
dimension: the distinction between early and adult socialization but for now we once again lump
all regime subtypes together.
15
Thus, the difference between Stalinism and neo-Stalinism is significant at .05 two-tailed in model 2 and at .1 onetailed in model 3.
17
Table 5 here
The first finding worth noting is that according to model 1, the distinction between early
and adult socialization is analytically useful: whereas the effects of early communist exposure
are highly statistically significant (at .001) and substantively large, adult communist exposure
only has about half the impact and falls short of achieving statistical significance.16 Moreover,
the difference between early and late socialization is not affected by whether we control for
interwar Soviet membership or whether we restrict our analysis to East European countries in
models 2 and 3. Taken together, these results suggest that at least for the first decade of the
transition, communist socialization efforts were much more effective at shaping (anti)democratic
values when directed at children and adolescents than at adults.
Once again, the statistical significance and the magnitude of the effect was weaker for
economic attitudes but the overall pattern was similar: early socialization had a stronger impact
than adult socialization and these differences persisted even once we control for interwar
communist membership. However, it should be noted that the differences between early and
adult socialization effects were substantively smaller in models 4-6 and no longer statistically
significant.
In the statistical models in Table 6 we disaggregate the communist socialization process
along both dimensions simultaneously: as a result our regressions include eight socialization
measures (early and adult socialization for each of the four subtypes of communism.)
Table 6 here
In broad terms, the regressions in Table 6 confirm the main trends we identified when looking at
the two disaggregation dimensions separately in Tables 4 and 5: that early socialization has a
stronger anti-democratic and (to a somewhat lesser extent) anti-capitalist effect than adult
16
The difference between the coefficients was significant at .09 two tailed in model 2.
18
socialization, and that the differences across regime subtypes are more pronounced once we
account for the different country-level dynamics of interwar Soviet republics.
However, the results in Table 6 also highlight a few interesting nuances that were not as
clear in the earlier tests. First, by differentiating between communist subtypes, the contrast
between early and adult socialization becomes clearer for both democratic and economic
attitudes, in the sense that both the magnitude and the statistical difference between the early and
adult exposure regression coefficients is larger for most regime subtypes than the combined
difference in the corresponding models in Table 5.17 In part this difference is driven by the fact
that in the models that control for interwar Soviet membership, the effects of communist adult
socialization are actually largely positive (though they fall short of achieving statistical
significance), which suggests that adult socialization under communism may have actually had
the unintended effected of undoing some of the early socialization achievements of the
communist education systems.
Second, while the results in model 2 confirm the effectiveness of neo-Stalinist
socialization and to a lesser extent of reform communist socialization, it shows that these effects
were limited to early socialization but had virtually no effect on democratic values for
respondents who experienced these regimes as adults. Even more interestingly, the null effect in
model 2 of Table 4 about the impact of Stalinist socialization receives a more nuanced
interpretation in model 2 of Table 6. Thus, the non-finding appears to be the result of two
countervailing effects: a negative and marginally significant (at .06 two-tailed) of early Stalinist
socialization and an equally sized positive "pro-democratic" effect of adult Stalinist life
experience. Model 5 reveals a similar but slightly weaker pattern in the case of pro-capitalist
attitudes. Both paint a picture of a world where the overbearing Stalinist message is easily
17
The only exception is post-totalitarianism in model 3 and to a lesser extent in model 2.
19
swallowed by children but rejected by adults, an idea not inconsistent of how we often think of
life under totalitarian regimes.
Finally, the fairly large and statistically significant effects of early reform communist
socialization in models 4-6 in Table 6 show that reform communism was quite effective in
inculcating anti-capitalist values at an early age, though once again its persuasive powers were
much weaker for adults. Nonetheless these patterns, which hold up even once we control for
interwar Soviet membership, qualify the modest results in the corresponding models in Table 4.
6. Conclusions
Two decades after the collapse of communism, it is clear that post-communism did not
simply emerge out of a tabula rasa: the past mattered. Establishing exactly how the past
mattered – and doing so in a systematic manner that allows for the accumulation of scientific
knowledge across multiple research endeavors – is of course much trickier. In this manuscript,
we have sought to move this endeavor forward by presenting one pathway by which the
communist era past might affect post-communist attitudes, which is through the effect of actually
living through communism. Within this framework, we have presented two theoretical
arguments: communism might have imprinted attitudes on its citizens or it might have bred
resistance among its citizens. Furthermore, we have explored potential variation across both
imprinting and resistance due to the time of one’s life in which one was exposed to communism,
as well as variation in the “types” of communism to which one might be exposed. We have also
illustrated a method for testing the types of hypotheses, which is to use historically defined
cohorts that vary cross-nationally while controlling for the age of respondents and the timing of
surveys in order to solve the identification problems that can plague age-period-cohort analysis.
20
In order to put some tractability on our general topic, we specifically examined the effect
of exposure to communism on attitudes towards democracy and the market. Democracy and
capitalism represent perhaps communism’s two most popular targets, and thus the direction of
the imprinting and resistance hypotheses are very easily identifiable. On the basis of our
empirical analysis, we have three main findings.
First, with minor exceptions, communism appears to have more of an imprinting effect
than a resistance effect. The one exception in this regard is that living through Stalinism as an
adult – and perhaps witnessing its horrors first-hand – did breed a “resistance” effect in terms of
more pro-democratic attitudes. Otherwise, though, greater communist exposure – even after
controlling for age – generally meant more opposition to democracy and the market.
Second, exposure to communism seems to have a more systematic effect on imprinting
anti-democratic sentiments than anti-market sentiments. Indeed, an important determinant of
anti-capitalism sentiment turned out to be the timing of the survey, suggesting that it is actually
the post-communist experience that was having more of an effect in turning citizens against
capitalism than the communist experience.
Third, while there were a few significant differences in the effects of living through
particular types of communism, which confirm the analytical utility of distinguishing between
particular regime subtypes. However, these differences were largely confined to early
socialization, where neo-Stalinist exposure had greater anti-democratic effect than posttotalitarian exposure, while early reform communist exposure was more effective in inculcating
anti-capitalist attitudes. Moreover, we still need clearer theoretical explanations for these
differential patterns, which for now raise more questions than they answer.
21
Fourth, in general it appears that early socialization (exposure during ages 6-17) had
systematically more important effect on driving down support for democracy (and in some cases
capitalism) than adult exposure. This is an especially interesting finding in line with other work
suggesting the importance of political socialization during one’s early years. (Campbell et al.
1960; Bartels and Jackman 2012).
Finally, there appears to be a large imprinting effect (i.e. opposition to democracy and
capitalism) from living in an inter-war Soviet republic that goes significantly beyond the simple
fact that the people from these three countries (Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia) were exposed to
more years of communism than their counterparts in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. This
finding is especially important for our overall effort to understand the different mechanisms
through which communist legacies shape post-communist political behavior: there are clearly
legacy effects from the former Soviet Union that are not dependent simply on individuals having
been exposed to more years of communism.
This final observation suggests a number of possible directions for future research. It is
possible that simply “years of exposure to communism” (or different types of communism) is not
the best way to capture communist experience. Perhaps the true data generating process is not
linear, and instead is some sort of tipping model. Or, alternatively, perhaps there are effects that
kick in when no living relative/acquaintance can remember the time before communism. More
likely, though, is the possibility that there are other factors that distinguish the former Soviet
republics from other post-communist countries in systematic ways: these may include different
demographic legacies from communist; different institutional legacies; and different postcommunist experiences/shocks.
22
Table.1. Communist Experience by Year and Country
Country
Transition to
Communism
Stalinist
PostStalinist
Hardline
Bulgaria
1945
1946-53
1954-89
1990
Czechoslovakia 1945-47
1948-53
1953-67,
1969-89
1968
East Germany
1945-48
1949-62
1971-89
1963-1970
Hungary
1945-47
1948-53
1957-60
1961-1989
1954-1956
Poland
1945
1946-1956
1980-83
1963-1980,
83-87
1956-62,
1988-89
Romania
1945-47
1948-1964
1971-89
USSR
1918-20
1928-1953
1953-55;
1965-69
Yugoslavia
1945
1946-1948
23
PostTotalitarian
Reformist
1965-70
1970-84
1921-27;
1956-64;
1985-1991
1949-90
Table 2: Summary of Arguments
Communism as Monolithic Force
Type of Exposure
Cumulative
Socialization
Imprinting
More years under communism,
more anti-market
Socialized under communism,
more anti-market
Resistance
More years under communism,
more pro-market
Socialized under communism,
more pro-market
Effect of
Exposure:
Varieties of Communism
Type of Exposure
Cumulative
Effect of
Exposure:
Socialization
More years under Stalinism > postStalinism> postImprinting
totalitarian/transition > reform
communism: more anti-market,
Socialized under Stalinism > postStalinism> posttotalitarian/transition > reform
communism: more anti-market,
More years under Stalinism > postStalinism> postResistance
totalitarian/transition > reform
communism: more pro-market,
Socialized under Stalinism > postStalinism> posttotalitarian/transition > reform
communism: more pro-market,
24
Table 3: Cumulative communist socialization VARIABLES
Communist exposure
(1)
(2)
Democ. Democ.
support support -.012**
(.003)
-.005**
(.001)
.009**
(.003)
-.003
(.010)
-.002
(.016)
-.002
(.004)
.001
(.020)
-.017*
(.006)
.070*
(.031)
.284**
(.026)
.132**
(.019)
.087**
(.015)
All
24,912
.055
-.353**
(.058)
.003*
(.001)
.016*
(.007)
-.016
(.012)
-.001
(.002)
.019
(.017)
-.026**
(.005)
.073*
(.027)
.283**
(.023)
.126**
(.017)
.083**
(.014)
All
24,912
.076
Communist exposure*
Interwar Soviet Rep.
Interwar Soviet Rep.
Age
Year
FH democracy
GDP chg (2yr)
Inflation (log)
Unemployment
GDP/capita (log)
Post-Secondary
Education
Secondary Education
Male
Sample
Observations
R-squared
(3)
Democ.
support (4)
Democ.
support
(5)
Procapitalist
(6)
Procapitalist
(7)
Procapitalist
(8)
Procapitalist
-.004*
(.002)
-.004**
(.002)
-.001
(.001)
-.331**
(.070)
.003*
(.001)
.016*
(.007)
-.016
(.012)
-.001
(.002)
.019
(.017)
-.026**
(.005)
.073*
(.027)
.282**
(.023)
.125**
(.017)
.083**
(.014)
All
24,912
.076
-.007**
(.003)
-.002
(.002)
-.003
(.002)
.002
(.002)
-.053**
(.015)
.000
(.015)
.008*
(.003)
.011
(.028)
.011
(.008)
-.039
(.027)
.047
(.037)
.041#
(.020)
.045**
(.012)
All
22,778
.120
-.269**
(.054)
-.002
(.002)
-.038*
(.015)
-.011
(.012)
.009**
(.002)
.025
(.022)
.004
(.007)
-.037
(.027)
.046
(.035)
.037#
(.019)
.043**
(.012)
All
22,778
.132
-.001
(.002)
-.000
(.018)
-.048*
(.017)
.013**
(.004)
.079**
(.020)
-.005
(.007)
-.021
(.021)
.055
(.047)
.035
(.024)
.039**
(.013)
EE
16,567
.131
-.002
(.002)
.000
(.001)
-.272**
(.066)
-.002
(.002)
-.038*
(.015)
-.011
(.012)
.009**
(.002)
.025
(.022)
.004
(.007)
-.037
(.027)
.046
(.035)
.037#
(.019)
.043**
(.011)
All
22,778
.132
.003*
(.001)
.015
(.009)
-.016
(.013)
-.003
(.003)
.013
(.022)
-.020**
(.006)
.064*
(.028)
.271**
(.027)
.126**
(.019)
.087**
(.015)
EE
18,300
.057
Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<.01, * p<.05, # p<.1
Note: Also included in regressions but not reported were indicators for locality size, religious
affiliation, and dummy variables indicating missing values.
25
Table 4: Cumulative communist socialization (by regime subtypes) Stalinist total
exposure
Neo-Stalinist total
exposure
Post-totalitarian total
exposure
Reform comm. total
exposure
Interwar Soviet Rep.
Age
Year
FH democracy
GDP chg (2yr)
Inflation (log)
Unemployment
GDP/capita (log)
Post-Secondary
Education
Secondary Education
Male
Sample
Observations
R-squared
(1)
Democ
support
-.010**
(.002)
-.007*
(.003)
-.012**
(.003)
-.010**
(.003)
(3)
Democ
support
.002
(.005)
-.007**
(.002)
.001
(.003)
-.004*
(.002)
(4)
Procapitalist
-.007#
(.003)
-.001
(.002)
-.008**
(.002)
-.005#
(.003)
.007**
(.001)
-.009
(.012)
.008
(.015)
.003
(.005)
.019
(.020)
-.019**
(.006)
.087*
(.040)
.284**
(2)
Democ
support
-.001
(.003)
-.008**
(.002)
-.002
(.003)
-.006**
(.002)
-.439**
(.068)
.003*
(.001)
.026*
(.012)
-.030*
(.012)
-.004
(.004)
.008
(.019)
-.025**
(.005)
.060#
(.032)
.289**
(6)
Procapitalist
-.004
(.005)
-.004#
(.002)
-.001
(.003)
-.004
(.002)
.000
(.002)
-.060**
(.015)
.013
(.014)
.013**
(.003)
.032
(.030)
.008
(.007)
-.021
(.027)
.044
(5)
Procapitalist
-.002
(.003)
-.002
(.002)
-.002
(.002)
-.002
(.002)
-.274**
(.077)
-.002
(.002)
-.037*
(.017)
-.011
(.016)
.009*
(.003)
.024
(.025)
.004
(.007)
-.038
(.029)
.046
.002
(.001)
.034*
(.013)
-.040**
(.013)
-.009#
(.005)
-.003
(.027)
-.019**
(.006)
.045
(.031)
.274**
(.025)
.134**
(.018)
.084**
(.014)
All
24,912
.059
(.024)
.128**
(.018)
.084**
(.014)
All
24,912
.078
(.027)
.124**
(.020)
.088**
(.015)
EE
18,300
.062
(.037)
.042#
(.021)
.043**
(.012)
All
22,778
.124
(.036)
.037#
(.020)
.043**
(.011)
All
22,778
.132
(.046)
.033
(.025)
.040**
(.013)
EE
16,567
.132
-.001
(.002)
.007
(.020)
-.055**
(.018)
.010#
(.005)
.074**
(.023)
-.005
(.007)
-.024
(.020)
.056
Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<.01, * p<.05, # p<.1
Note: Also included in regressions but not reported were indicators for locality size, religious
affiliation, and dummy variables indicating missing values.
26
Table 5: Early vs. adult communist socialization
Early communist
exposure
Adult communist
exposure
Interwar Soviet Rep.
Age
Year
FH democracy
GDP chg (2yr)
Inflation (log)
Unemployment
GDP/capita (log)
Post-Secondary
Education
Secondary Education
Male
Sample
Observations
R-squared
(1)
Democ
support
-.014**
(.003)
-.008
(.005)
(3)
Democ
support
-.007**
(.001)
.001
(.003)
(4)
Procapitalist
-.008**
(.002)
-.006#
(.004)
.005
(.004)
.001
(.010)
-.002
(.016)
-.002
(.004)
.001
(.020)
-.017*
(.006)
.070*
(.031)
.288**
(2)
Democ
support
-.008**
(.001)
.001
(.003)
-.356**
(.057)
-.002
(.003)
.021**
(.008)
-.016
(.012)
-.001
(.002)
.020
(.017)
-.026**
(.005)
.072*
(.027)
.288**
(6)
Procapitalist
-.004*
(.002)
-.002
(.003)
.001
(.003)
-.052**
(.015)
.000
(.015)
.008*
(.003)
.011
(.028)
.011
(.008)
-.039
(.026)
.047
(5)
Procapitalist
-.003#
(.002)
.001
(.003)
-.271**
(.054)
-.005
(.003)
-.036*
(.015)
-.010
(.012)
.009**
(.002)
.025
(.022)
.004
(.007)
-.037
(.027)
.048
-.002
(.003)
.019*
(.009)
-.016
(.013)
-.003
(.003)
.013
(.022)
-.020**
(.006)
.064*
(.028)
.276**
(.026)
.135**
(.019)
.086**
(.015)
All
24,912
.059
(.023)
.130**
(.016)
.083**
(.014)
All
24,912
.078
(.026)
.131**
(.018)
.086**
(.015)
EE
18,300
.062
(.037)
.042*
(.020)
.045**
(.012)
All
22,778
.124
(.035)
.039#
(.019)
.043**
(.011)
All
22,778
.132
(.047)
.037
(.024)
.039**
(.013)
EE
16,567
.132
-.003
(.003)
.001
(.018)
-.048*
(.017)
.013**
(.004)
.079**
(.020)
-.005
(.007)
-.021
(.021)
.056
Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<.01, * p<.05, # p<.1
Note: Also included in regressions but not reported were indicators for locality size, religious
affiliation, and dummy variables indicating missing values.
27
Table 6: Early vs. adult socialization by sub-regime types
Stalinist early
exposure
Neo-Stalinist early
exposure
Post-totalitarian early
exposure
Reform comm. early
exposure
Stalinist adult
exposure
Neo-Stalinist adult
exposure
Post-totalitarian adult
exposure
Reform comm. adult
exposure
Interwar Soviet Rep.
Age
Year
FH democracy
GDP chg (2yr)
Inflation (log)
Unemployment
GDP/capita (log)
Post-Secondary
Education
Secondary Education
Male
Sample
Observations
R-squared
(1)
Democ
support
-.015**
(.004)
-.007*
(.003)
-.015**
(.005)
-.014**
(.004)
-.003
(.004)
(2)
Democ
support
-.006#
(.003)
-.010**
(.003)
-.001
(.004)
-.007#
(.004)
.006
(.005)
(3)
Democ
support
-.003
(.006)
-.010*
(.004)
.004
(.004)
-.007
(.004)
.006
(.009)
(4)
Procapitalist
-.010*
(.004)
.003
(.003)
-.010**
(.003)
-.013**
(.004)
-.001
(.004)
(5)
Procapitalist
-.006
(.004)
.001
(.003)
-.002
(.004)
-.008#
(.004)
.004
(.004)
(6)
Procapitalist
-.005
(.006)
.000
(.004)
-.000
(.004)
-.009#
(.005)
.003
(.007)
.000
(.004)
-.005
(.005)
-.004
(.004)
-.000
(.003)
.005
(.005)
.001
(.003)
-.445**
(.072)
-.003
(.003)
.033*
(.013)
-.030*
(.012)
-.005
(.004)
.009
(.019)
-.026**
(.005)
.060#
(.033)
.290**
(.024)
.129**
(.018)
.084**
(.014)
All
24,912
.079
-.001
(.003)
.007
(.004)
.002
(.003)
.003
(.003)
-.004
(.004)
.002
(.004)
-.000
(.003)
.003
(.003)
.002
(.003)
-.003
(.003)
.040*
(.014)
-.038**
(.013)
-.010#
(.005)
-.004
(.027)
-.020**
(.006)
.046
(.032)
.277**
(.028)
.125**
(.020)
.087**
(.015)
EE
18,300
.063
-.004
(.003)
-.056**
(.015)
.015
(.014)
.013**
(.003)
.035
(.029)
.007
(.007)
-.016
(.026)
.049
(.037)
.046*
(.021)
.044**
(.011)
All
22,778
.126
.003
(.003)
.003
(.004)
.005
(.004)
-.265**
(.078)
-.007*
(.003)
-.034#
(.017)
-.008
(.016)
.009**
(.003)
.028
(.024)
.003
(.007)
-.033
(.027)
.049
(.036)
.040#
(.020)
.043**
(.011)
All
22,778
.133
.001
(.003)
-.003
(.013)
.009
(.015)
.002
(.006)
.021
(.019)
-.020**
(.007)
.089*
(.042)
.288**
(.026)
.137**
(.019)
.085**
(.014)
All
24,912
.060
-.005#
(.003)
.008
(.020)
-.052*
(.018)
.011*
(.005)
.077**
(.022)
-.006
(.007)
-.020
(.019)
.060
(.046)
.037
(.025)
.041**
(.013)
EE
16,567
.133
Robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<.01, * p<.05, # p<.1
Note: Also included in regressions but not reported were indicators for locality size, religious
affiliation, and dummy variables indicating missing values.
28
ELECTRONIC APPENDIX
Table A1: Overview of survey countries and years for Post-Communist Publics (PCP) data
Country
Belarus
Bulgaria
Czech Rep
East Germany
Estonia
Hungary
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Romania
Russia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Ukraine
1990
1991
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
1992 1998 1999 2000 2001
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
29
Table A2: Question wording for survey items used in the construction of DVs
Democratic
support index
(Cronbach alpha
= .60)
Pro-capitalist
views
(Cronbach alpha
= .695)
Do you think that elections are the best way to choose a government and the
authorities of the country or do you not think so? (Yes/No)
Looking at things from the point of view of utility, do you think that in order for
things to go well we need a parliament? Or are you among those who think we can
do without it?
Do you think that in democracy the problem in our country (1) will be solved (2)
will remain the same (3) will get more serious?
Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements: We need
political parties if we want democratic development.
Which do you think would be better for our country: (1) One-party system (2)
Multi-party system?
Please tell me which of the words in this list describe best what you think of the
capitalist free enterprise economy:
V351: Inequality
V354: Selfishness
V363: Repression
V364: Corruption
Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statements:
V397: The capitalist economy, based on free private initiative, is the best economic
system for our country
V398: The capitalist economy, based on free private initiative, will enable us to
solve the problems that we … (e.g. Hungarians) face
30