Department of Political Science Publications
4-1-1994
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania:
Sources and Implications for Democracy
William M. Reisinger
University of Iowa
Arthur H. Miller
Vicki L. Hesli
Please see article for additional authors.
Copyright © 1994 Cambridge University Press. Used by permission. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/
displayJournal?jid=JPS
British Journal of Political Science, 24:2 (1994) pp. 183-223. DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400009789
Hosted by Iowa Research Online. For more information please contact: [email protected].
BJ.PoI.S. 24, 183-223
Printed in Great Britain
Copyright © 1994 Cambridge University Press
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and
Lithuania: Sources and Implications
for Democracy
WILLIAM M. REISINGER, ARTHUR H. MILLER,
VICKI L. HESLI AND KRISTEN HILL MAHER *
Employing data from three surveys of mass opinion conducted in Lithuania, Ukraine and
European Russia during 1990, 1991 and 1992, we examine three prominent but competing
hypotheses about the source of political values in the post-Soviet societies: historically derived
political culture, regime indoctrination and the effects of societal modernization. The literature
on Soviet political culture argues that Russian mass values are distinguished by authoritarianism
and love of order, values which will be largely shared by Ukrainians, especially East Ukrainians,
whereas Lithuanian society would not evince this pattern. Our data do not support this hypothesis. We then examine acceptance of Soviet era norms, both political and economic. We do not
find support for the argument that regime indoctrination during the Soviet period produced a set
of ideologically derived values throughout the former Soviet Union and across a series of
generations. The third hypothesis - that industrialization, urbanization, war and changing educational opportunities shaped the formative experiences of succeeding generations in the Soviet
societies and, therefore, their citizens' values - receives the most support: in each of the three
societies, differences in political values across age groups, places of residence and levels of
education are noteworthy. The variations in political values we find across demographic groupings help us to understand the level of pro-democratic values in each society. We find that in
Russia and Ukraine more support for democracy can be found among urban, better educated
respondents than among other groups. In Lithuania, the urban and better educated respondents
evince pro-democratic values at about the same level as their counterparts in Russia and Ukraine,
but Lithuanian farmers and blue-collar workers support democracy at a level closer to urban,
white-collar Lithuanians than to their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts. In all three societies,
those citizens most likely to hold values supportive of democracy are those who are less
favourable to Soviet-era values and less convinced of the primacy of the need for social and
political 'order'. Those who desire strong leadership, however, tend to have more democratic
values, not more authoritarian ones.
Why do some societies have a pattern of mass political values that seems
supportive of stable democracy while others do not?! The political transformations under way in the post-Soviet societies provide a rare laboratory for
* Reisinger, Miller and Hesli are with the Department of Political Science, University of Iowa;
Maher with the Department of Politics and Society, University of California at Irvine. The authors
wish to thank John Bushnell, John P. Willerton and the anonymous referees of the Journal for their
careful readings and useful suggestions on earlier versions. The article was first drafted while
Reisinger was a Fellow at the University of Iowa's Center for Advanced Studies, and he thanks the
Center and its staff for their support.
I A variety of terms has been used by different researchers to indicate subjective, politically
relevant, individual outlooks: values, attitudes, orientations, beliefs and others. Though definitions
vary, the term "values' is most commonly employed to indicate the more fundamental outlooks that
we seek to study and we thus employ that term. See William M. Reisinger, 'Conclusions: Mass
184
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
investigating this question. Because the societies within the Soviet Union were
so diverse, some analysts argue that the distributions of pro-democratic values
will vary according to their political and social traditions. History has blended
a distinct brew of political outlooks for every society. In other words, we
should expect to find a Russian political culture, a Kazakh political culture, a
Georgian political culture, etc. Yet other observers argue that we should expect
that the traumatic societal transformations of the Soviet period, experienced by
all Soviet societies (though not for the same number of years by all), had a
similar impact on political values in each. Those who see a common impact
disagree about the nature of the impact. One group argues that the regime's
conscious efforts to inculcate Marxist-Leninist political values (,indoctrination') shaped virtually all those now alive in these societies. The other points
instead to the intensive process of industrialization, urbanization and education
that the Soviet regime carried out. Because those processes ('modernization')
have elsewhere shaped political values, they should be expected to influence
values within the Soviet societies in a similar manner.
Each of these three understandings of the source of political values in the
societies that formerly comprised the Soviet Union - political culture, indoctrination and modernization - implies a prediction of the likelihood of democratic
consolidation in the Soviet successor states. The first two both tend to be
pessimistic about democracy's chances. Few of the Soviet societies experienced the Western intellectual and political trends that characterize the longest
lasting democracies. The largest society, Russia, in particular was seen as
having a heritage of authoritarianism that would ill prepare them for either
opposing an autocratic regime or shoring up a fledgling democracy. The Soviet
regime's ideological indoctrination, by downplaying individual rights, pluralism and other liberal institutions, is generally seen as preventing the
development of pro-democratic values. Only those who conclude that modernization has undercut the other influences expect to find values supportive of
democracy within many sectors of these societies.
In this article, we test the major propositions concerning Soviet political
values - propositions about the sources of those values as well as about the
implications for democratization. We employ data from surveys of mass opinion conducted in Lithuania, Ukraine and European Russia during 1990, 1991
and 1992. These data are more extensive and representative than previously
available. They provide the clearest picture to date of mass political orientations in the former Soviet Union - both before and after the break-up of that
state. We find weak support for 'political culture' arguments - arguments that
distinctive features of a society's history give its citizens a unique pattern of
political values. Moreover, the Soviet regime had extremely limited success in
its seventy-year effort to inculcate regime values among Soviet citizens. The
(F'nole continued)
Public Opinion and the Study of Post-Soviet Societies', in Arthur H. Miller, William M. Reisinger
and Vicki L. Hesli, eds, Public Opinion and Regime Change: The New Politics of Post-Soviet
Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), pp. 271-7, at pp. 272-3.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
185
data do support arguments that the societal transformations carried out during
the Soviet period have shaped current values. Demographic differences in the
Russian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian populaces, especially age and level of education, do help explain differences in values. Even so, demographic
information alone does not adequately explain variation in the distribution of
key democratic values, a finding that reminds us that the post-Soviet societies
are complex and finely differentiated societies. Likewise, simple expectations
about the prospects for democracy in one society versus another receive little
support from our data. Democratic values are present in all three societies - in
the predominantly Slavic societies of Russia and Ukraine as well as in the more
Westernized Lithuania - at levels the pessimists would not have expected. Our
data thus help account for the role that mass political action played in the fall
of the Soviet regime. Even so, democratic values are concentrated in certain
societal groups and are not so high that the consolidation of democracy is
assured.
PAST RESEARCH INTO SOVIET POLITICAL VALUES
Efforts to depict the political values of Soviet citizens have a long history. They
were endemic in the study of Soviet politics - despite that field's predominant
focus on elites and despite the prevalence at one time of the totalitarian model,
which posited extremely limited possibilities for non-politicians to influence
politics significantly. Scholars employed the Soviet people's value structure to
explain participation patterns, economic behaviour, as well as their basic acceptance of (or at least acquiescence to) the regime. 2 Attention to mass values
naturally increased in response to the changes initiated during the Gorbachev
period. For many, mass political values held at least one key to the prospects
for radical political change, in particular, for democratization.
The preferred technique for measuring mass political values and other orientations is to conduct surveys of a sample of a society's populace. 3 Generally,
2 Studies of these issues include Donna Bahry, 'Politics, Generations and Change in the USSR,'
in James R. Millar, ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet
Citizens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 61-99; Zvi Gitelman, 'Soviet Political
Culture: Insights from Jewish Emigres', Soviet Studies, 29 (1977), 543--64; Alex Inkeles and
Raymond Bauer, The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1959); Brian Silver, 'Political Beliefs of the Soviet Citizen: Sources of
Support for Regime Norms,' in Millar, Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR, pp. 100-41; and
Stephen White, 'The USSR: Patterns of Autocracy and Industrialism', in Archie Brown and Jack
Gray, eds, Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States, 2nd edn (New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1979), pp. 25--65.
3 Following Almond's influential work, a society'S political orientations are commonly referred
to under the rubric 'political culture'. See Gabriel Almond, 'Comparative Political Systems',
Journal of Politics, 18 (1956), 391-409. A large body of work relates 'political culture' to democratization. However, to measure and analyse a society's political culture per se presents severe
theoretical and methodological problems. The researcher runs foul of the inability of political
186
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
the Soviet regime did not permit such surveys prior to glasnost', and the results
of those that were conducted were unavailable to Western scholars during most
of the Soviet period. Surveys of those who had emigrated from the Soviet
Union provided many helpful insights into Soviet mass values, but the drawbacks of the sample made firm conclusions difficult. 4 Given the lack of direct
survey data on Soviet values, the field of Soviet studies also examined Russia's
past institutions, social patterns and literature (and those of other Soviet societies) for insights into mass values. However, such forms of evidence have
their own flaws. Literary works, for example, represent trends and debates
among the intelligentsia, and literary depictions of popular values will reflect
the prism of the author's own concerns. Survey data seem the best route to
measuring the distributions of different values, that is, to answering such
questions as how widespread within a given society is a given value, and which
people hold which values. The findings we report take advantage of the lifting
of restrictions on collaborative survey research that occurred at the end of the
1980s. We use systematic survey results to examine prominent questions about
Soviet (and now post-Soviet) values. Two distinct but related questions concern us here: where do political values in these societies come from? And does
that make a difference for democratization?
CONTENDING SOURCES OF POLITICAL VALUES
The pattern of political values within a society has a complex combination of
sources. Potential sources can be found on three levels of analysis: (I) factors
that characterize the society as a whole (and thus distinguish it from other
societies); (2) characteristics of within-society groups; and (3) idiosyncratic
sources of values which distinguish an individual from others in the society
and in groups to which the individual belongs. Most of the arguments about
Soviet political values have revolved around the first level of analysis: factors
thought to generate particular political values across the entire society. Because
of their simplicity, across-the-board hypotheses have an appealing power and
(F'note continued)
culture theorists to agree on a definition ofthe term, to relate individual orientations to society-wide
'cultures', and to provide clear hypotheses about how individual orientations will influence either
individual behaviour or society-wide political outcomes. On the other hand, the distribution of
certain key values does merit investigation. Fortunately, we can investigate values without the
encumbrance of dealing with political culture in its entirety. Despite eschewing the label 'political
culture' to depict the object of our interest, we use our findings to discuss the prospects for
democracy, as have those studying political culture. (Compare this list of the challenges facing those
who employ political culture as a concept to the discussion in Ruth Lane, 'Political Culture:
Residual Category or General Theory?' Comparative Political Studies, 25 (1992), 362-87.)
4 See Inkeles and Bauer, The Soviet Citizen; White, 'The USSR'; Wayne Di Franceisco and Zvi
Gitelman, 'Soviet Political Culture and "Covert Participation" in Policy Implementation', American
Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 603-21; and the contributions to Millar, ed., Politics, Work and
Daily Life. In each of these cases, the authors discuss possible sources of bias from interviewing
emigres and are careful to choose their analyses so as to minimize the bias.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
187
elegance. This power and elegance might prove a liability, however, if the
hypothesis hides important within-society variation. Given the size and complexity of the post-Soviet societies, therefore, the appropriateness of different
levels of analysis ought to be subject to testing. We thus begin by examining
the influence of the two factors most commonly thought to shape popular
political values within the Soviet Union: long-term historical patterns and
efforts by the Soviet regime to inculcate popular values in line with MarxismLeninism. For each, we derive hypotheses testable with our survey data. We
then examine hypotheses at the second level of analysis: the degree to which
key demographic categories - including political generation, urban residence
and level of education - explain the distribution of values within each of the
three societies surveyed.
History and Contemporary Values
The way in which we employ the term 'history' needs clarifying. For three
decades, the notion that each society has its own political culture has dominated
the comparative study of mass values. A society'S political culture consists of
the orientations towards politics of the citizens en masse. Cross-nationally,
political cultures must differ because each society has been through different
experiences. This approach, furthermore, implies that past distributions of
values shape future distributions; a country's political culture has continuity.
Distant events or patterns of behaviour can carry weight in the formation of
values long beyond the time when they occurred. Though the political culture
approach need not wed itself to the notion of continuity, its proponents were
slow to incorporate notions of value change. 5 So, when we discuss the impact
of history, we refer to arguments that certain unique characteristics of the
Russian past (or other societies' pasts) have a direct impact on the shape of
current political values. Some societies may have historical heritages that better
prepare them for making democracy work. Also, we do not refer to arguments
that posit an intermediary variable (such as societal demographics) between
history and values. Those arguing that the urbanization of the Russian population during the Soviet period changed the political culture are arguing against
those who stress the weight of history. This is an important debate, and its
arguments must be tested against the distribution of public values.
Observers have postulated numerous 'traditional' roots of contemporary
Russian political values. These include the climate and topography, the Orthodox religion, the peasant political economy, the political institutions of the
Russian autocracy, and the lack of what we now term a civil society - autonomous sub-groups actively pursuing their interests vis-a-vis the state. As a
result of some or all of these features of Russia and Russian history, observers
attribute an array of values to Russians. Some argue, for instance, that the
5 As a prominent proponent, Harry Eckstein, notes in 'A Culturalist Theory of Political Change',
American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 789-804.
188
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
communal organization of peasant life influences current political orientations. 6 Russians, in this view, tend to stress one's duties to the commune (the
village or, later, the country) and the rewards the commune can bestow, rather
than political or civil rights owed to an individual. Another result of the
communal tradition that, many feel, continues to influence the Russian outlook
is a distaste for individual achievement or distinction. If one can help the entire
group prosper, fine, but better that all suffer equally than that one gets ahead. 7
Other attributes of the contemporary Russian outlook attributed to Russian
history include messianic expansionism, low levels of political efficacy, fatalism, dogmatism and intolerance. 8
Most commonly stressed, however, in the context of the prospects for
democratization, is the 'authoritarian' strain in Russian tradition. This authoritarian outlook consists of a respect for strong leadership and a fear of disorder
or anarchy. The respect for strong leadership is said to derive from several
factors: the period of rule by Mongol khans (AD 1240-1480); the vastness of
Russian territory, which mandated strong leadership to ensure protection from
outside attack; and the strong powers accorded the male head of household in
early peasant life. In the latter sense, the authoritarian trait is related to patrimonialism. Russians are said to have felt a personalistic relationship with the
sovereign, the Tsar, to whom they were subject and whom they could petition
when things got really bad. Surveys of Soviet emigres indicated that support for
strong leadership in the political system was widespread, and more recent
in-country surveys lend support as well. 9
6 See Edward L. Keenan, 'Muscovite Political Folkways', The Russian Review, 45 (1986),
115-84, pp. 124-5; and Martin Crouch, Revolution and Evolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Politics
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1989), pp. 89-90.
7 See Gennady M. Denisovsky, Polina M. Kozyreva and Mikhail S. Matskovsky, 'Twelve Percent
of Hope: Economic Consciousness and Market Refonn', in Miller, Reisinger and Hesli, Public
Opinion and Regime Change, pp. 224-38.
8 Those mentioning messianic expansionism include Robert C. Tucker, 'The Image of Dual
Russia', in Cyril Black, ed., The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1960), pp.587-605; Crouch, Revolution and Evolution, p.90; and Gordon B.
Smith, Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change, 2nd edn (New York: St Martin's Press, 1991), p. 7.
Smith, Soviet Politics, also lists inefficacy (pp. 13-14), fatalism (p. 5), dogmatism (p. 6) and intolerance (p. 6). Gibson and Duch examine the level of intolerance in the Soviet Union with recent
survey data. See James L. Gibson, Raymond M. Duch and Kent Tedin, 'Democratic Values and the
Transfonnation of the Soviet Union', Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 329-71; and Gibson and Duch,
'Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture', in Miller, Reisinger and Hesli, Public
Opinion and Regime Change, pp. 69-94.
9 Those who stress the Russian desire for a strong leader include Richard Pipes, Russia Under the
Old Regime (New York: Scribner's, 1974); White, 'The USSR'; Crouch, Revolution and Evolution,
p. 88; and Smith, Soviet Politics, p. 12. Pipes and White (pp. 29-30) discuss patrimonial ism as an
aspect of Russian political culture. For pertinent results from emigre surveys, see Inkeles and Bauer,
The Soviet Citizen, pp. 246-7; and Gitelman, 'Soviet Political Culture', p. 559. The more recent
findings of support for strong leadership are in Seweryn Bialer, 'Is Socialism Dead?' in Robert
Jervis and Seweryn Bialer, eds, Soviet-American Relations After the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1991), pp. 98-106. Social psychologists have also sought in recent years to apply
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
189
Linked to the desire for strong leaders is a Russian love of order. \0 Linguistic
usage supports this argument. 'Disorder' and 'disorderly' are extremely common expressions of denigration among Russians. This value is thought to
reflect two features of Russian life. First, until the 1930s, four out of five
Russians were peasants, and the innate caution of the peasant led them to value
order. Secondly, harsh punishments by the autocratic Tsarist regime created a
desire for clear boundaries between permissible and impermissible behaviour.
In debates about Soviet political culture, Russian history received the most
attention. This reflected the predominance of Russia within the Soviet Union.
Recent years have demonstrated, though, a distinct identity and historical continuity of the non-Russian ethnic groups that lived in the USSR. The distinctive
features of Ukrainian and Lithuanian history thus deserve note here. II
The Lithuanians transformed themselves into the dominant empire of central
Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a time when Muscovy
was emerging from Mongol domination. In the 'Union of Lublin' of 1569,
(F'note continued)
scales that measure psychological 'authoritarianism' to Russian samples. For an example using a
small quota sample of Muscovites in 1991, see Sam G. McFarland, Vladimir S. Ageyev and Marina
Aabalakina-Paap, 'Authoritarianism in the Former Soviet Union', Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 63 (1992), 1004-10. The authors find, inter alia, that the Russian sample was slightly
lower overall than a similar American sample and that Russian authoritarianism became less closely
associated with Marxist-Leninist ideology between 1989 and 1991.
One must be extremely cautious in drawing implications about the 'authoritarian' nature of a
heritage of valuing strong leadership. Someone finding that Russians desire a strogii nachal'nik (a
decisive or firm leader, one with a strong hand on the rudder) should not hastily interpret this as
approval for absolutist rule. Having a strong and accountable leader is precisely the reason why most
democracies have a single executive officer whose power and whose responsibility for the success
or failure of government policy distinguish him or her from the legislature, even when that person
depends on a parliamentary majority for continuing in office. Weak leadership is a bad idea in any
political system. The key questions in assessing acceptance of democracy are whether the citizens
desire limits on the leader, in both time and scope, and who they believe ought to invoke those limits.
In fact, to foreshadow later analyses in this article, we find that desire for strong leadership is
positively correlated with democratic values, even when holding other factors constant.
10 Those who list fear of disorder include Seweryn Bialer, Stalin's Successors: Leadership,
Stability and Change in the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 1456; Crouch, Revolution and Evolution, p. 88; and Smith, Soviet Politics, p. 12. Those stressing a love
of order among Russians usually acknowledge a recurrent fascination with anarchy (though see
Mary McAuley's critique of White, 'The USSR' for failing to note this, in 'Political Culture and
Communist Politics: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', in Archie Brown, ed., Political Culture
and Communist Studies (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1984), pp. 13-39, at pp. 16-17). Even so,
observers typically see the desire for order as predominant.
II Some would lump both Lithuania and Ukraine together with Russia into an Eastern cultural
area distinct from Western Europe, even if the more Westerly areas are less distinct. Schopftin, for
example, grants that East Europeans, especially a group such as the Lithuanians who adopted a
variant of Western Christianity, shared in many of the developments that over the centuries led to
democracy in the West. Still, he argues that they partook of these trends 'slightly differently, less
intensively, less fully' (George Schopflin, 'The Political Traditions of Eastern Europe', in Stephen
R. Graubard, ed., Eastern Europe - Central Europe - Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991),
pp. 59-94, at p. 65).
190
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
Lithuania and Poland became a single state. For several centuries, this state
practised a form of partially democratic rule not found elsewhere in Eastern
Europe. As part of the Polish-Lithuanian unification, the bulk of Ukrainian
territory was transferred from loose Lithuanian suzerainty to direct Polish rule.
The Ukrainians disliked the rule by the Catholic Poles who, though Slavic, did
not share the Ukrainians' Orthodox religion. Polish efforts to strengthen
Catholicism in the region were a source of antagonism and put Moscow on
alert. The Polish overlords had to put down numerous rebellions by Ukrainian
peasants as well as by the Cossacks. In the middle 1600s, Ukrainian rebels
turned to Moscow for aid. The resulting war ended in 1667 with Ukraine split
between Polish and Muscovite control. That division split Ukraine into eastern
and western portions and into more Russian-oriented versus less Russianoriented Ukrainians, respectively. In three phases from the 1770s through the
1790s, Austria, Prussia and Russia divided and incorporated Poland, which had
become the dominant partner in the Polish-Lithuanian union. In the process,
Russia received the rest of Ukrainian territory and much of what is now
Belorussia. Russia and Ukraine became republics within the Soviet Union.
Lithuania re-emerged as an independent state following the First World War,
but the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Lithuania and its Baltic neighbours,
Latvia and Estonia, in 1940, making them republics within the Soviet Union.
Although we cannot, of course, compare current political values with values
from centuries past, cross-national comparisons can highlight historical
influences. The hypothesized Russian bent towards authoritarianism is not part
of the Lithuanian heritage. Although Ukraine had only the briefest periods of
independent statehood until 1991, Ukrainians gained a political and cultural
identity while under Polish-Lithuanian and Russian rule. The western portions
of Ukraine in particular share more of the Lithuanian-Polish heritage. In recent
decades, many Ukrainian and Lithuanian intellectuals - together with intellectuals from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary - sought to highlight their
societies' distinctiveness from (Asiatic) Russia by referring to their region as
'Central Europe' .12
We hypothesize, in other words, that if history is a particularly important
source of current values, scores on our measures of pro-authoritarian values
should be highest among citizens of Russia and somewhat lower among citizens of eastern Ukraine, western Ukraine and Lithuania, in that order. 13 This
12 Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (Cambridge: Granta Books, 1989); Jacques Rupnik, 'Central Europe or MitteleuropaT in Graubard, ed.,
Eastern Europe - Central Europe - Europe, pp. 233-65 and Jeffrey Goldfarb, After the Fall: The
Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
13 A slightly different argument would be that the ethnicity of the respondent is more important
for degree of authoritarian values than the residence of the respondent. If so, a better test would be
to group Russians and other Slavs together and compare them to other nationalities, regardless of
republic. A t-test of the hypothesis that the mean value on the index of order discussed below is
equal between Slavs and non-Slavs results in statistics of 0.33 in Russia and 1.14 in Ukraine (both
statistically insignificant) but of 4.13 (statistically significant) in Lithuania, where most Slavic
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
191
pattern should hold even when the analysis controls for various demographic
factors such as education, urban versus rural residence, age and gender.
To follow the distinction made by others, we analyse two dimensions of
authoritarianism: the desire for strong leadership and a preference for order in
society. We measure the impact of the desire for strong leadership using an
index of two questions (see Appendix). This index ranges from zero to two
depending on how often a respondent answered in a 'leadership-supportive'
fashion. As Figure 1 illustrates, our data do not support the hypothesis that the
desire for strong leadership will have a clear-cut cross-society pattern. Russia
and Ukraine have almost identical distributions. Lithuanians on average score
slightly lower on the scale, but the differences in the means between Lithuania
and either of the other two states fail to achieve statistical significance (as
indicated by the t-test statistics). Notably, the proportion of the Lithuanian
sample that most supports strong leadership is as high as in the Slavic societies.
When we separate western Ukraine from the other parts of Ukraine, the mean
score is 1.21, the same as Lithuania's, though again the differences in means
are not statistically significant.
We measure the impact of the desire for order using an index of three
questions each relating in a slightly different way to a personal desire for order
and stability (see Appendix). Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of this index
across the three states. Though the mean score for Lithuania in 1992 is slightly
lower (1.69 versus 1.73 for Russia and 1.78 for Ukraine), the differences are
not statistically significant. Moreover, if one collapses the four-point scale into
two categories - low and high - one sees that the data are split very evenly in
the Slavic societies and in Lithuania: each has roughly 60 per cent of the sample
favouring order and 40 per cent eschewing it.
One pattern worth noting is that the desire for order increases in all three
societies from 1991 to 1992. In 1991, the desire for order in Lithuania was
significantly different from the patterns in Russia and Ukraine. In 1992,
though, anxieties had risen in all three societies, most sharply among Lithuanian citizens. The increased Lithuanian desire for order undercut the
distinctiveness of Lithuanian views found in 1991. The two-year period covered by our surveys was a time of growing social and political discord, when
citizens faced rising economic and physical insecurity (including the deployment of military force in Lithuania and Russia). Evidently, these developments
made order more attractive in all three societies.
In sum, we must reject the 'historically derived political culture' hypothesis:
Russians, and those long under Russian hegemony, do not evidence a more
authoritarian disposition when compared to the Lithuanians. Our findings support the few historical studies that downplay a Russian authoritarian tradition. 14
(F'note continued)
residents immigrated in recent decades. In Lithuania, it quite clearly did matter whether one was
Russian or Lithuanian. Elsewhere, it did not.
14 For example, Keenan, 'Muscovite Political Folkways'.
192
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
IillI Low
II Medium
•
High
43
43
Q)
a.
E
co
'"
Q)
Cl
co
EQ)
<J
Iii
a.
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Fig. I. Desire for strong leadership, 1992
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
Index of desire for strong leadership: 0
Mean score
Standard deviation
= Low; 2 = High
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
1.27
0.72
1.28
0.71
1.21
0.77
T-tests of differences between means for each pair of countries:
Russia-Ukraine - 0.43 Russia-Lithuania - 1.51 Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
0.669
Significance
0.131 Significance
1.76
0.078
Those positing historical continuity face a challenge that they only rarely
confront directly: deciding when history stopS.15 The Russian-history school
bears the burden of demonstrating that sixteenth-century events, practices or
outlooks continue to have any bearing given the impact of twentieth-century
events, practices and outlooks. Even if one believes that value change comes
slowly, it seems plausible to expect that, over the course of several generations,
the impact of long-distant values on the formation of current values would
increasingly weaken. While momentum may be a powerful force, decay is
another well-established physical and social property. Long-distance electrical
transmissions would decay without periodic 'boosters' that help maintain the
15
Cf. McAuley, 'Political Culture and Communist Studies', p. 22.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
Ell Lowest
III Low
•
193
39
High
o Highest
CD
Ci
E
til
U)
'0
Ukraine
Russia
Lithuania
Fig. 2. Desire for order, 1992
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
Index of desire for order: 0
= Low; 4 = Highest
Russia
Mean score
Standard deviation
Ukraine
1991
1992
1991
1992
1991
1992
1.50
1.07
1.73
1.08
1.43
1.05
1.78
1.05
1.26
0.89
1.69
0.98
T-tests of differences between means for each pair
of countries
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
Russia-Li thuania
Significance
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
Lithuania
1991
1992
1.68
0.093
4.95
0.000
3.35
0.001
- 1.13
0.258
0.78
0.437
1.67
0.096
194
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
current. Those who posit continuity in political values over many generations
must explain what those boosters are and why the boosters do not change when
so much else does. The twentieth century has seen significant changes, for
example, in Russian family life, community organization and educational practices. If these likely 'boosters' have undergone such transformation, how can
they transmit the same values?
Indoctrination Under the Soviet Regime
Meyer states elegantly the reasons we should expect the coming to power of the
Bolsheviks in 1917 to have produced significant changes in popular values:
Communist revolutions entail, among other things, clashes of culture. Although
the founding fathers of Marxism did not foresee this, and one would look through
their collected writings in vain to find even the most casual use of the concept of
culture, those who made revolutions in their name, beginning with Lenin, became
self-conscious warriors of a new culture trying to replace an old one ... Leninism
quite obviously is a scheme for modernization; and modernization is, among other
things, a culture clash, with the culture of 'rationality' seeking to destroy and
replace all autochthonous traditional cultures. 16
Fitzpatrick and others have pointed to the value changes that occurred in the
early years of Soviet power, designating the period a 'cultural revolution' .17
The Soviet regime (and the regimes in the East European states) paid careful
attention to generating continued support among new generations of citizens. 18
As Meyer makes clear, a transformation in values could occur because of
transformations in the society (,modernization') as well as due to explicit
regime efforts to inculcate values through its control of the schools, mass media
and other instruments of social control. I9 We want to examine the latter
influence first, before turning to modernization hypotheses. Though modernization and indoctrination are interconnected, some prominent interpretations
of Soviet society focused primarily on examining ideological tenets of the
regime. The logic underlying the indoctrination hypothesis we specify below
16 Alfred G. Meyer, 'Cultural Revolutions: The Uses of the Concept of Culture in the Comparative Study of Communist Systems', Studies in Comparative Communism, 16 (1983), 5-8, p. 5.
17 See Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1978).
18 Frederick C. Barghoorn and Thomas W. Remington, Politics in the USSR, 3rd edn (Boston,
Mass.: Little, Brown, 1986), pp. 130-64; Thomas F. Remington, 'Words and Deeds: CPSU Ideological Work', in Michael Paul Sacks and Jerry G. Pankhurst, eds, Understanding Soviet Society
(Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 147-63. With regard to Eastern Europe, see James P.
McGregor, 'Value Structures in a Developed Socialist System', Comparative Politics, 23 (1991),
181-99.
19 Jowitt argues that the impact of the Soviet period on contemporary values derives not from the
ideology of the regime but from the practices of the Soviet political system and the behaviours to
which those practices gave rise. See Kenneth Jowitt, 'Political Culture in Leninist Regimes', in
Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992), pp. 50-87, p. 293.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
195
is that 'What makes Communist societies unique is the aggressive effort on the
part of all the regimes over several generations to make basically the same
official political culture the only political culture' .20
Most such observers depict the impact of indoctrination by the Soviet regime
(and by Soviet-type regimes in Eastern Europe) as fundamentally negative and,
in particular, as anti-democratic. Bialer points to 'a philosophy of dependency
instead of self-reliance, of an all-embracing collectivism and conformity over
individualism, of commitment to the equalization not only of opportunities but
also of outcomes, of rigidity and extremism of beliefs, and of intolerance. ,21 He
argues that, even though the workers suffered the most from a 'utopian idea run
amok', they were the ones who internalized the values and habits expressed in
communist ideology. 22 Similarly, Feher asserts that the acceptance of paternalism - wanting someone to look after you, which therefore is the opposite of
liberty-seeking - is a key element of culture in Soviet-type societies.23 For
these observers, the main hope for a democratic political culture is that the
indoctrination did not 'take'.
Previous empirical work on this question is ambivalent. The interviews with
Soviet emigres in the 1950s indicated that widespread support existed among
these emigres for some aspects of the Soviet system that were central to the
ideology. Among them was support for state control of large-scale industry.
Moreover, the emigre interviews of the 1970s and 1980s reaffirmed several key
findings of the earlier research. Yet recent surveys of Soviet citizens find
unexpectedly high levels of support for values outside the Soviet ideology,
including individual rights and democratic institutions. 24
See McGregor, 'Value Structures in a Developed Socialist System', p. 183.
Bialer, 'Is Socialism Dead?' p. 100. On pp. 101-2, Bialer argues that intolerance (and acceptance of authoritarianism) among Soviet citizens is evidenced by popular support for the death
penalty. Yet according to the General Social Survey, 71.5 per cent of Americans in 1991 supported
capital punishment in the case of murder. Given this level of public support for the death penalty
in a long-established democracy, we find Bialer's indicator to be of questionable value.
22 An opposing hypothesis should be noted. White, 'The USSR', p.35, has argued that the
Bolshevik regime adopted policies that reflected the traditional culture. According to him, any
popular acceptance of Soviet-era practices occurred because those practices accorded with popular
beliefs not because the beliefs underwent change. Similarly, Keenan argues in 'Muscovite Political
Folkways' that the trends that produced the Soviet system by the end of the 1930s simultaneously
led to a new synthesis of the traditional culture and hence to an essential continuity before and after
1917. Certainly, Bialer's description of the effects of communist ideology (quoted above) sounds
suspiciously similar to the list of putative effects of Russian history.
23 Ferenc Feher, 'Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation in Soviet-Type Societies', in T. H. Rigby
and Ferenc Feher, eds, Political Legitimation in Communist States (New York: St. Martin's, 1982),
pp.64-81.
24 Inkeles and Bauer, The Soviet Citizen', pp. 233-54. For analyses of the interviews with
emigres conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, see Gitelman, 'Soviet Political Culture', and James R.
Millar, ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Recent in-country survey results are reported in Jeffrey
W. Hahn, 'Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture', British Journal of Political Science,
21 (1991),393-421; James L. Gibson, Raymond M. Ouch and Kent L. Tedin, 'Cultural Values and
20
21
196
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
If indoctrination during the Soviet period had the desired effect and was
enduring, responses indicating support for specific communist values should be
high, and in particularly should be higher in Russia and Ukraine than in Lithuania since the latter spent twenty fewer years under Soviet rule. Also, the
indoctrination should have a particular cross-time pattern. A common expectation among scholars is that citizens form values as young adults that stay
fairly stable the rest of their lives. Changes in a society's distribution of values
thus result from demographic changes. The analyst predicts a generation's
values based on the experiences of that generation when they were young
adults, either personal factors such as the level of education achieved, or major
events such as political terror, wars or economic depressions. 25 Allowing for
the greater impact of indoctrination on the generation that came of age in the
1920s and 1930s (and who form the older portion of our respondents), the level
of acceptance of Soviet values should be highest among that generation and
lower but stable across later generations. 26
To measure acceptance of Soviet values, we employ two devices, one emphasizing the political dimension and the other the economic dimension. The
first is a question repeated in all three years. We asked respondents to agree or
disagree (or do either strongly) with the statement that 'These days, Stalin is
not given adequate credit for his accomplishments'. The way one interprets
Soviet life under Stalin has long been a potent symbol of one's attitude towards
many aspects of the Soviet system. 27 The famous 1988 letter from Leningrad
chemistry lecturer Nina Andreeva attacking perestroika brought the issue into
the open. Some see the Stalin era as a time when an industrial and military
superpower was built with the enthusiastic dedication of the people. Others, of
course, see the period as one of mass terror and repression. Figure 3 shows the
(F'note continued)
the Transfonnation of the Soviet Union', Journal of Politics, S4 (1992), 329-71; and Gibson and
Ouch, 'Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture'.
25 Hahn, 'Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture', p. 417, stresses education level.
A partially competing explanation for age differences found in a sample is that orientations can
change over the life cycle of an individual and that older respondents will be likely to be more
conservative because of their place in the cycle of life, not their fonnative experiences. See M.
Kent Jennings and Richard Niemi, Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and
Their Parents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Scott Flanagan, 'Changing
Values in Advanced Industrial Society', Comparative Political Studies, 14 (1982), 403-44. We do
not seek to distinguish between these effects rigorously but note that the two seem likely to work
together. The older generation are currently the most conservative in support of the Soviet period
and Soviet institutions, but a natural tendency to value the past more highly than younger age
cohorts is reinforced by the oldest generation's experiences during the early years of Soviet power.
We can point, moreover, to partial evidence that political generations are salient in these societies,
since the generational pattern is somewhat different in Lithuania from that which it is in Russia and
Ukraine.
26 See Bialer, Stalin's Successors; and Jerry F. Hough, Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1980).
27 Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917 (New
York: Basic Books, 1982), chap. 4.
= Fully disagree; 5 = Fully agree
Stalin's contribution is currently undervalued:
Russia
Mean score
Standard deviation
1990
1991
1992
1990
1991
1992
1990
1991
1992
3.62
0.80
2.45
1.31
2.76
1.30
3.59
0.82
2.47
1.24
2.60
1.12
3.30
0.64
2.26
1.22
2.81
1.28
o
1990
1991
0.74
0.456
7.26
0.000
- 6.29
0.000
- 0.30
0.763
2.75
0.006
2.92
0.004
1992
+ 2.82
0.005
- 0.58
0.563
- 2.85
0.004
1990
~
....
[
35
~
l2"
II
II
T-tests of differences between means for each pair of
countries
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
Ukrai ne-Li thuania
Significance
Lithuania
Ukraine
~
S·
::>.:l
::::
C>
'"'"
fS'
c:
iii
Q)
0.
~
i:l
'"
~
.2
s'
t1:>
(;
C>
c:
$:l
iii
;:os
~
$:l..
C>
'"
r:---
Q)
§:
C>
'"
C
Q)
::::
$:l
0
;:os
:;;
S·
a.
Russia
Ukraine
lithuania
Fig, 3, Agreement with the statement that Stalin's contribution is
currently undervalued
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
..\0
-.J
198
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
proportion of each country's sample that agreed or strongly agreed with this
statement. First, note that the proportion of supporters of Stalin never exceeds
a third of the population in any of the societies. Of course, even those levels are
higher than one would find in non-Soviet societies. Cross-nationally, the indoctrination argument suggests that Russian and Ukrainian respondents should
view Stalin positively to roughly the same degree and both should do so more
positively than citizens of Lithuania. This pattern held in 1990 (20% and 21 %
for Russia and Ukraine vs. 10% in Lithuania) and, to a lesser degree, in 1991
(25% and 22% for Russia and Ukraine vs. 15% in Lithuania). In 1992, however, the positive orientation toward Stalin jumps upward in both Russia and
Lithuania, but not in Ukraine. The indoctrination hypothesis cannot account for
respondents in Lithuania giving Stalin greater credit than those in Ukraine.
To measure acceptance of the regime's desired orientation toward economic
policies, we employ an index of six variables (see Appendix). Figure 4 shows
the distribution of this index in each country. Lithuania does have the lowest
average score on this index. The difference is slight, however, and only the
difference in means between Ukraine and Lithuania is statistically significant,
as indicated by the t-tests. Why Ukraine should have an average score as much
higher than Russia's as the Lithuanian score is lower than Russia's cannot be
explained by the potential for indoctrination alone.
What about the generational expectations of the regime indoctrination hypothesis? After the initial impact of the Stalinist transformation of these
societies, the level and impact of regime efforts to indoctrinate the populace
ought to have been relatively stable until the Gorbachev period. Yet, as Figures
5 and 6 demonstrate, the regime's indoctrination efforts become rather steadily
less effective from the older generations to the younger. There is a conspicuous
gap between the mean score for those citizens of Russia over 67 years old and
those who are younger. The support falls rather continuously, moreover.
Lithuania, oddly enough, most closely matches the expectations of the indoctrination thesis. The oldest respondents in our sample, those who achieved
adulthood during the pre-Soviet period, are less supportive of Stalin than the
next four decade cohorts. The harsh indoctrination efforts applied to Lithuanian
society following its incorporation into the Soviet Union might have had an
effect. Only the youngest respondents in Lithuania show less support of Stalin
than the oldest group. In Figure 6, the upward trend in average level of support
for regime economic values as one moves from the younger to the older
respondents is pronounced in all three countries. Although regime norms
strongly affected the oldest generations, the leadership's efforts to indoctrinate
the populace grew increasingly less effective the more the transforming events
of the 1930s and 1940s receded.
In sum, our data do not support the argument that Soviet indoctrination
efforts had an overarching, society-wide impact. Those reaching conclusions
about Soviet political values based on regime indoctrination do not argue that
only one or two generations will be affected. While Communist party monopoly of the instruments of social control remained strong into the late
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
14
12
, ..
til
Q)
- - - Ukraine
,, ',
" ••• Lithuania
,. ...." ---'"'\
til
glO
',:'
ctil
~
--Russia
,..,
"
199
'..
\
/\
, '\,/
8
",
'0
~ 6
<1l
C
~ '4
Q;
0,.
2
Most hostility
Least hostlity
Fig. 4. Level of economic indoctrination (hostility to market economics), 1992
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
Index of economic indoctrination: 0
21 = Most indoctrinated
Mean score
Standard deviation
= Least indoctrinated;
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
9.86
4.63
10.13
3.75
9.59
3.73
T-tests of differences between
means for each pair of countries
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
- 1.25
0.211
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
1.02
0.308
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
2.23
0.026
1980s, our data show that those instruments grew steadily less potent as time
went on. One can certainly say that specific generations had their values shaped
by their experiences and the events they lived through, but regime indoctrination techniques had to compete against other influences. Other intra-societal
groupings besides age cohorts therefore deserve examination.
200
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
o Under 26 yrs. old
~ 27-36 yrs. old
•
o
o
37-46 yrs. old
47-56 yrs. old
57-66 yrs. old
3.6
IiII Over 67 yrs. old
t5
Q)
.r:
Ol
I
lC)
ii
~
o
...J
II
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Fig. 5. Average view of Stalin by age cohort, 1992
Societal Transformations and Value Change
During the late 1920s and the 1930s, the Soviet regime sought to industrialize
the economy and mechanize agriculture, thus prompting migration into the
cities. The regime largely achieved these goals. 28 Following the Second World
War, urbanization continued. In 1913, over 80 per cent of the populace in all
three of these societies was rural. By 1959, the rural population in Russia had
fallen to 48 per cent, with Ukraine at 54 per cent and Lithuania at 61 per cent.
By the 1989 census, rural society represented only 28 per cent of the populace
in Russia, 33 per cent in Ukraine and 30 per cent in Lithuania. Notable strides
in levels of education and the growth in white-collar employment also characterize the Soviet period.
A large body of research argues that certain changes in a society, changes
sometimes dubbed 'modernization', produce fundamental shifts in people's
values and behaviours. 29 On the basis of these findings from other world
regions, several scholars have argued that industrialization of the economy,
28 For data on literacy and education levels among Soviet citizens, see Robert A. Lewis, 'The
Universality of Demographic Processes in the USSR', in Michael Paul Sacks and Jerry G.
Pankhurst, eds, Understanding Soviet Society (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 97-115.
29 For a review, see Gabriel A. Almond, 'The Development of Political Development', in Myron
Weiner and Samuel P. Huntington, eds, Understanding Political Development (Boston, Mass.:
Little, Brown, 1987), pp. 437-90.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
201
mUnder 26 yrs. old
II 27-36 yrs.
"C
Q)
1ii
c
·5
old
.37-46 yrs. old
047-56 yrs. old
~ 57--66 yrs. old
~ Over 67 yrs. old
13.8
0
"C
12.4
.S:
iii
0
:::iE
C\i
-0
Q)
1ii
c
l50
"C
.S:
iii
as
Q)
...J
II
a
~
0
0
rJl
Q)
Cl
~
Q)
>
«
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Fig. 6. Average economic indoctrination by age cohort, 1992
collectivization of agriculture, the resulting migration to the cities, as well as
increased literacy and access to higher education all changed Soviet societies,
making them more 'modern' and therefore more open to democratic and market reforms. 3D Others have challenged that conclusion. White stressed the
continued rural and pre-modern character of Soviet society. He predicted that
future years would see 'little more than marginal changes in the distinctive
blend of tradition and modernity, "autocracy" and "industrialism", by which
that political culture may presently be characterized' .31 Similarly, Jowitt has
argued that the industrialization of the Soviet period was not equivalent to the
modernizing industrialization experienced by Western societies and would
therefore not have produced equivalent changes in values and behaviours. 32
Previous empirical studies of Soviet public opinion supported the conclusion
30 Jerry F. Hough, Russia and the West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Moshe Lewin, The
Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988); and WaIter D. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat: Workers, Politics and Crisis in Gorbachev's Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
31 White, 'The USSR', pp. 57-8.
32 Jowitt, New World Disorder.
202
TABLE 1
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
Regression of Desire for Strong Leadership on Demographic
Variables, 1992
Russia
Year of birth
Standardized
coefficient
Ukraine
Lithuania
- 0.002 ( - 1.539) - 0.001 ( - 0.984) - 0.004 ( - 1.573)
- 0.042
- 0.032
- 0.074
Education level
Standardized
coefficient
0.047 (3.595)
0.054 (2.733)
0.103 (3.734)
0.102
0.092
0.179
Urban residence*
Standardized
coefficient
0.318 (6.468)
0.359 (7.231)
0.016 (0.214)
0.182
0.239
Ethnic Russian *
Standardized
coefficient
Adjusted -? for the
equation
Sample size
0.010
- 0.052 ( - 0.500)
- 0.022
0.05
1,297
0.07
899
0.02
500
*Yes = I
that societal transformations had influenced popular values by revealing generational cleavages on several important dimensions. Because the pattern is not
entirely clear, however, it deserves further attention. 33
To investigate the degree to which the authoritarian and ideological values
varied according to demographic characteristics, we regressed our previously
introduced measures (desire for strong leadership, desire for order, assessment
of Stalin and level of acceptance of economic indoctrination) on age, highest
level of education obtained, whether the respondent lived in an urban or rural
setting and, in Lithuania, whether the respondent was Russian. Tables 1-4
present the results. The low? statistics for all the models reveal that demographics alone, not surprisingly, do not suffice to account for the patterns of
values in these societies. However, in several cases the explanatory power of
key variables deserves note. For example, in Table 1, the desire for strong
leadership varies notably between urban and rural respondents in both Russia
and Ukraine (standardized coefficients of 0.18 and 0.24, respectively). In
33 See Bahry, 'Politics, Generations and Change in the USSR'; William Zimmerman, 'Mobilized
Participation and the Nature of the Soviet Dictatorship', in Millar, ed., Politics. Work and Daily Life
in the USSR, pp. 332-53; Hahn, 'Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture'; Cynthia
Kaplan, 'New Forms of Political Participation', in Miller, Reisinger and Hesli, eds, Public Opinion
and Regime Change, pp. 153-67. For results that modify the author's own earlier findings, see
William Zimmerman, 'Intergenerational Differences Among Mass Publics and Foreign Policy' , in
Miller, Reisinger and Hesli, eds, Public Opinion and Regime Change, pp. 259-70.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
TABLE
2
203
Regression of Desire for Order on Demographic Variables
Russia
- 0.019 ( - lO.643)
Year of birth
Standardized
- 0.284
coefficient
- 0.050 ( - 2.627)
Education level,
Standardized
- 0.073
coefficient
Urban residence*
Standardized
coefficient
Ukraine
- 0.007 ( - 3.260) - 0.014 ( - 5.058)
- O.llO
- 0.004 ( - 0.120)
- 0.004
- 0.235
0.051 (1.500)
0.071
- 0.025 ( - 0.347)
0.083 (1.096)
- 0.018 ( - 0.192)
- O.OlO
0.037
- 0.009
0.178 (1.384)
Ethnic Russian *
Standardized
coefficient
Adjusted r for the
equation
Sample size
Lithuania
0.061
0.09
1,297
0.01
899
0.05
500
*Yes = I
contrast to what one might have expected, urban respondents value strong
leadership more highly (at least when one holds education level and year of
birth constant, as this equation does). Even more unexpected is the finding that
the more highly educated are more supportive of strong leadership (positive
and significant coefficients in all three societies). Separating out Russians in
Lithuania does not have a strong influence. These results make clear that, as
noted in footnote 9 on p. 189, the links between the desire for strong leadership
and authoritarianism must be tested not assumed.
In all three societies, the most powerful explanation for variation in the
desire for order is age (see Table 2). The older respondents most strongly prefer
order in all three societies. No other explanatory factor has a noteworthy
impact. Similarly, age strongly influences the respondent's view of Stalin (see
Table 3), with the impact particularly strong in Russia and Ukraine (standardized coefficients of - 0.22 and - 0.18, respectively). This illustrates the fact
that the pattern found in Figure 5 remains strong when controlling for other
possible influences. In Russia, the more educated are also less likely to view
Stalin favorably. Finally, the more educated, younger and urban citizens in all
three countries are less supportive of the old regime's economic doctrines
(Table 4). Not surprisingly, Russians in Lithuania are significantly more likely
to accept those doctrines than ethnic Lithuanians, with that variable remaining
strong even when controlling for the other demographic factors.
This evidence of intra-societal complexity in the distribution of key values
serves as a reminder that inter-societal comparisons that characterize a society
204
TABLE
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
3
Regression of View of Stalin on Demographic Variables
Russia
Year of birth
Standardized
coefficient
Education level
Standardized
coefficient
Urban residence*
Standardized
coefficient
Ukraine
Lithuania
- 0.018 ( - 7.344) - 0.012 ( - 4.913) - 0.009 ( - 2.284)
- 0.217
- 0.175
- 0.118
- 0.149 ( - 5.956) - 0.073 ( - 2.137)
0.012 (0.229)
- 0.182
0.012
- 0.078
- 0.034 ( - 0.348) - 0.117 ( - 1.355) - 0.265 ( - 1.778)
- 0.01 1
- 0.049
Ethnic Russian*
Standardized
coefficient
Adjusted r for the
equation
Sample size
- 0.090
0.000
0.000
0.09
1,065
0.04
777
0.01
399
*Yes = I
by a single number are at best very crude simplifications. Neither 'Russian
history' nor 'Soviet indoctrination' can account for the diversity of political
outlooks. These particular results also support the arguments that the tumultuous recent history of these societies has left its mark on them. In each one, there
is an educated urban stratum with distinctive outlooks, as well as a generation
gap on key values.
With this in mind, we tum to the question of democratic prospects in the
Soviet successor states. We cannot provide a definitive evaluation of these
prospects, of course. Not only is a full examination of the link between current
political values and democratization outside the scope of this article, but the
prospects depend on more than public values. Nevertheless, the argument
about mass publics and democratization in the former Soviet Union has tended
to remain at the societal level of analysis. The foregoing analyses suggest that
much is to be gained by delving deeper into the implications of the intrasocietal
patterns for democracy.
VALUES AND MASS SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACY IN THREE FORMER
SOVIET REPUBLICS
From the ancient Greeks onward, theorists have argued that democratic institutions must quickly fail without supportive public behaviour. Certain public
values must presumably exist by the time a country establishes democratic
institutions; there will be insufficient time for the values to emerge afterwards.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
TABLE
4
205
Regression of Economic Indoctrination on Demographic
Variables, 1992
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Year of birth
Standardized
coefficient
- 0.105 ( - 11.860) - 0.065 ( - 7.380) - 0.064 ( - 5.066)
Education level
Standardized
coefficient
- 0.422 ( - 4.650) - 0.349 ( - 3.02)
- 0.309 ( - 2.039)
- 0.141
- 0.106
Urban residence*
Standardized
coefficient
- 0.965 ( - 2.699) - 0.899 ( - 3.406) - 1.009 ( - 2.238)
- 0.350
- 0.082
- 0.268
- 0.113
- 0.114
Ethnic Russian*
Standardized
coefficient
Adjusted ,-2 for the
equation
Sample size
*Yes
=
- 0.262
- 0.113
1.110 (2.026)
0.103
0.16
972
0.12
687
0.11
357
I
In the absence of such values, a burst of pro-democratic enthusiasm or a
stratum of elites committed to democracy are unlikely to translate into stable
democratic institutions. This argument has enjoyed widespread acceptance in
Western scholarship at least since the publication of Almond and Verba's The
Civic Culture. 34 The argument has been used frequently to make pessimistic
assessments of the prospects for democracy in the former Soviet Union.
The argument, then, is that the widespread distribution within a society
of certain orientations may come close to being necessary for that society to
create a reasonably long-lasting democracy. Even observers who doubt that
particular values are prerequisites agree that they help to solidify democratic
institutions. 'It is obvious ... that the emergence and persistence of a
democratic government among a group of people depends in some way on
their beliefs. >35 Virtually none of those focusing on mass values, however,
consider them to be sufficient. All the former Soviet societies are currently
facing significant political (and economic and social) turmoil. Consequently,
much political behaviour in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania strikes observers as
34 Gabriel A. Almond and Sydney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy
in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). For a recent re-affirmation of
their claim, see Ronald Inglehart, 'The Renaissance of Political Culture', American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 1203-30.
35 Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989),
p.30.
206
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
non-democratic. The distribution of values, however, is worthy of study nevertheless. For one thing, the debate among social scientists hypothesizes a link
between values and democratization, and that link deserves investigation in the
former Soviet Union. For another, blaming the public for such things as low
levels of support for nominally democratic institutions, low levels of membership in non-communist political parties or low electoral turnout begs the
question of whether the institutions, party leaderships or candidates for office
are worthy of public support. If we seek to understand what exactly is promoting and what is hindering democratization, we need to separate the impact of
mass values from such other plausible explanations for current turmoil as
poorly designed institutions and non-democratic, corrupt elites.
Theorists have put forth various specific values or beliefs as vital to democracy. One is for citizens to give general (or 'diffuse') support to the institutions
of their democracy, as well as to the superiority of democratic rule. 36 A second
is when citizens, on the whole, trust other members of the society. Many argue
that without such interpersonal trust political partisans will be unlikely to
follow the rules of the game: to see opponents as loyal opponents who will not
kill or imprison them if they lose. 37 Also, people need to have interpersonal
trust for them to be willing to form and participate in 'secondary associations',
which make democracies work. 38 A third type of outlook seen as supportive of
democracy is when citizens place a high value on individual rights. 39 For these
and other values posited as 'supportive of democracy', the argument is not that
an individual holding those values would struggle against authoritarian rule,
but that when such values are widely distributed within a society democratization is more likely to succeed.
Those analysing the prospects for democratization in the Soviet successor
states tend to be extremely pessimistic.
To put it bluntly: the Leninist legacy, understood as the impact of Party organization, practice, and ethos, and the initial charismatic opposition to it, favor an
authoritarian, not a liberal democratic capitalist, way of life; the obstacles to which
]6 Examples of those making such an argument include John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty
and Representative Government (New York: Dutton, 1859 [1910]); Almond and Verba, The Civic
Culture; David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965); Arthur H.
Miller, 'Political Issues and Trust in Government', American Political Science Review, 68 (1974),
951-72; Jack Citrin, 'Commentary', American Political Science Review, 68 (1974), 973-88; and
Edward N. Muller and Thomas O. Jukam, 'On the Meaning of Political Support', American
Political Science Review, 71 (1977), 1561-95.
37 See V. O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961),
pp. 536-7; and Inglehart, 'The Renaissance of Political Culture'.
38 For evidence that interpersonal trust can correlate with non-democratic values, see Mitchell
Seligson and Edward N. Mulier, 'Political Culture in Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Latin
America' , paper presented at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
39 Gibson, Duch and Tedin, 'Cultural Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union'.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
207
are not simply how to privatize and marketize the economy, or organize an
electoral campaign, but rather how to institutionalize public virtues. 4o
A few observers argue that requisite orientations took root during the Soviet
period and provide an at least somewhat hospitable soil for democracy.41 As
with the debates about the sources of values, debates about the implications of
current values too often rest on anecdotal evidence. With mass surveys, a much
stronger source of evidence is available. We now examine several indicators of
democratic orientations and their relationship to history, indoctrination and
demographic features of Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania.
We examine five indicators of values supportive of democracy, the first of
which is the level of interpersonal trust. Figure 7 indicates the proportions of
each sample that felt they could trust people. Given that Lithuania is generally
accorded the best democratic prospects (due to its stronger ties to Western
traditions and culture), it is surprising that Lithuanians are less trusting than
Russians. For all three societies, the level of trust is lower than in many of the
countries included in the 1980 World Values Survey. 42 (The Scandinavian
countries top the charts with levels of trust over 50 per cent.) Yet despite the
generally low level of trust in the former Soviet societies, the levels in Russia
and Lithuania exceed those in France and Italy. (Russia also exceeds Belgium
and Germany.)
Our survey also asked respondents to fully agree, agree, disagree or fully
disagree with the statement that party competition strengthens the political
system. Figure 8 illustrates the percentage of respondents in each of the three
societies that agreed or agreed fully with the statement in 1990, 1991 and 1992.
On this dimension, again, Lithuanians seem to have values less supportive of
democracy. It is noteworthy that (for all three societies) the level of support for
party competition/ails from 1990 to 1992 (the mean scores rose). The sense of
excitement and empowerment that many Soviet citizens felt in the course of
All-Union and republic elections during 1989 and 1990 was wearing off.
We asked respondents in 1992 to agree or disagree with the statement
'Anyone has the right to organize opposition or resistance to any governmental
initiative'. The use of the language was deliberately rather extreme so that
those agreeing would be those who have a fairly well-developed sense of
individual liberty vis-a-vis the state. Figure 9 shows the breakdown of this
question across the Russian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian samples. In all three,
40 Jowitt, New World Disorder, p. 293. Other pessimists include Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand
Failure (New York: Scribner's, 1989); and Stephen White, '''Democratization'' in the USSR',
Soviet Studies, 42 (1990), 3-25.
41 For example, see S. Frederick Starr, 'Prospects for Stable Democracy in Russia', Occasional
Paper of the Mershon Center, Ohio State University, 1992; Hahn, 'Continuity and Change in
Russian Political Culture'; and Gibson and Duch, 'Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political
Culture'.
42 For analyses based on the World Values survey, see Inglehart, 'The Renaissance of Political
Culture'.
tv
o00
Most people can be trusted, 0
=
No; 1
=
::0
tIl
-z
Yes
en
Ukraine
Russia
Lithuania
Cl
tIl
1990
1991
1992
1990
1991
1992
1990
1991
1992
'fJ
0.25
0.43
0.27
0.44
0.32
0.47
0.25
0.44
0.23
0.42
0.20
0.40
0.28
0.45
0.14
0.34
0.29
0.45
r
r
~
Mean score
Standard deviation
tIl
'fJ
::c:
tIl
en
r
T-tests of differences between means for each
pair of republics:
1990
- 0.19
Russia-Ukraine
0.851
Significance
- 1.19
Russia-Lithuania
0.234
Significance
1.00
Ukraine-Lithuania
0.320
Significance
1991
1992
2.27
5.97
0.024
0.000
6.32
1.29
0.000
0.196
- 3.52
4.30
0.000
0.000
p
U1990
t5
E
c
I11III1991
Ol
.1992
co
u
c
Z
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33
Q)
Ci.
E
co
(/)
'0
Q)
Ol
.sc
Q)
~
Q)
c..
_
.. _
- -
Russia
Ukraine
Fig, 7, Interpersonal trust
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
Lithuania
Party competition will make the political system stronger, 1 = Fully agree; 5 = Fully disagree
Mean score
Standard deviation
Lithuania
Ukraine
Russia
1990
1991
1992
1990
1991
1992
1990
1991
1992
1.64
0.82
2.57
1.24
2.66
1.11
1.55
0.81
2.23
1.04
2.53
1.06
1.52
0.72
2.47
1.09
2.76
1.12
~
:::-:
~
of republics
I11III Agree
1990
1991
~
D Fully Agree D Disagree
T-tests of differences between means for each pair
;::
till Fully Disagree
~
S·
I11III Neulral
1992
40
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
1.77
0.076
6.50
0.000
2.75
0.006
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
2.50
0.013
1.62
0.106
- 1.56
0.119
a.
E
'"
<I)
"0
CIl
- 0.58
0.560
- 3.99
0.000
- 3.70
0.000
~
~.
CIl
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
~
;::
0>
!1l
c:
CIl
~
CIl
a.
Fig. 8. Distribution of opinion on whether party competition strengthens
polity. 1992
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
~
i:l
S·
~
§
!:l..
t-<
§:
§
E·
N
~
210
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
[[l] Fully Agree
D Disagree
II1II Agree
[ ] Fully Disagree
•
Neutral
52
(I)
0..
E
aI
(J)
'0
(I)
~
c:
~
(I)
a..
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Fig. 9. Distribution of opinion on whether anyone can oppose the goverment. 1992
Source: 1992 University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Survey
Anyone can oppose or resist any governmental initiative,
1 = Fully agree; 5 = Fully disagree
Russia
Mean score
Standard deviation
2.60
l.l0
Ukraine
Lithuania
2.47
0.99
2.30
0.99
T-tests of differences between means for each pair
of republics
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
2.66
0.008
5.08
0.000
2.94
0.003
solid majorities agree with the statement. A larger proportion of respondents
agreed in Lithuania than in Russia and Ukraine, but the overall agreement is
unexpectedly high.
The fourth measure of values supportive of democracy comes from the
battery used by Inglehart to measure whether a respondent is 'materialist' or
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
211
'postmaterialist' .43 The respondent is asked to select the two most important
goals for his or her country from a list of four. Two of the goals focus on
economics and crime (and are therefore 'materialist'), and two focus on freedom of speech and popular political influence (postmaterialist). The latter two,
'postmaterialist', goals measure support for key aspects of democratic governance. So, even though Inglehart's battery was not devised as a measure of
democracy-supporting values, the ranking of the two postmaterialist goals
provides such a measure. The index is constructed simply by counting whether
the respondent selected zero, one or both of the postmaterialist goals. Figure 10
indicates that Russia and Ukraine have almost identical distributions, and both
differ from Lithuania. In Lithuania, the proportion of full postmaterialists, as
well as the proportion of mixed materialistJpostmaterialists, is larger than in
Russia and Ukraine. This gap suggests that Lithuanians' focus on economic
problems and internal security is less likely to soften their commitment to
libertarian rights.
The final measure of democratic values is an index of support for individual
rights. The index measures how many of three possible rights the respondent
felt should 'always be protected' rather than 'protected only in some circumstances'. Figure 11 shows that Lithuanian scores on this index are significantly
higher than in Ukraine, in which the scores are significantly higher than in
Russia. Even in Russia, however, three out of ten respondents call for the
continuous protection of all three rights, while another third calls for protection
of two of the three. Rights consciousness is well established in all three former
Soviet societies. As noted by Gibson, Duch and Tedin, demands for liberal
rights seem to co-exist with a desire for order. 44
To understand the distributions within these societies of pro-democratic
values better, we combine three of the five measures just presented into a single
index of values supportive of democracy (see Appendix). Although interpersonal trust and selection of 'postmaterial' goals for the country have both been
prominent indicators of democratic values in other studies, they showed little
covariance with the other indicators. 45 We therefore excluded them from the
index. The index ranges from 0 (least supportive of democracy) to 5 (most
supporti ve). Figure 12 shows the distribution of this index in each society. The
distributions of values in Russia and Ukraine are almost identical. In Lithuania,
the curve is quite similar, though shifted to the right. The t-tests support the
visual evidence that democratic values are more prevalent in Lithuania. In all
three former Soviet republics, the presence of democratic values among much
of the populace is high. In each, a minority scores in the lower categories of the
index.
To go beyond this cross-republic breakdown, we examine how various
See Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
Gibson, Ouch and Tedin, 'Cultural Values and the Transfonnation of the Soviet Union'.
45 Inglehart uses both trust and postmaterialism as democratic indicators in 'The Renaissance of
Political Culture'.
43
44
212
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
I§l Zero
l1li One
•
Two
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Fig. 10. Number oJpostmaterialist values selected, 1992
Source: University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Surveys
Number of .'postmaterialist' goals selected as most important for
country, 0-2
Russia
Mean score
Standard deviation
Ukraine
1991
1992
1991
1992
1991
1992
0.63
0.63
0.49
0.56
0.67
0.61
0.45
0.54
0.88
0.66
0.66
0.60
T-tests of differences between means for
each pair of republics
1991
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
Lithuania
- 1.51
0.130
- 7.98
0.000
- 6.45
0.000
1992
1.62
0.106
- 5.74
0.000
- 6.73
0.000
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
213
D Lowest
IiIiII Low
•
High
D Highest
39
Q)
a.
E
m
rJ)
'0
Q)
g>
'E
Q)
~
Q)
a.
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Fig. II. Rights orientation
Source: 1992 University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Survey
Index of rights consciousness; 0 = Low; 3 = High
Mean score
Standard deviation
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
l.79
0.98
1.87
0.97
2.09
0.88
T-tests of differences between means
for each pair of republics
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
Russia-Li thuania
Significance
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
l.93
0.054
- 5.93
0.000
- 4.14
0.000
demographic and attitudinal attributes of our respondents relate to their scores
on the index of democratic values. Table 5 presents the results of a multivariate
regression. In Russia, level of education, desire for order and acceptance of
economic indoctrination are statistically significant and account for more than
35~r---------,------------------------------------­
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30
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trl
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2
Lowest
3
4
Score on Index (1992)
Highest
trl
CI'1
r
;J>
z
Fig. 12. Democratic values
Source: 1992 University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Survey
o
3::
;J>
Index of democratic values, 0
Russia
Mean score
Standard deviation
2.80
1.45
::c:
= Low; 5 = High
trl
::<l
Ukraine
Lithuania
2.91
1.46
3.18
1.20
T-tests of differences between means for each pair of republics
Russia-Ukraine - 1.71
Significance
0.087
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
- 5.10
0.000
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
- 3.46
0.001
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
215
minimal variance in the index (standardized coefficients greater than 0.1). The
signs of the coefficient reveal that, holding the other variables constant, the
more supportive of democracy are more highly educated and less economically
indoctrinated. In both cases, this accords with expectations. The lesser impact
of year of birth does not mean that democratic values are distributed equally
across Russian generations. As Table 4 demonstrated, the young are much
more likely to reject tenets of Soviet economics, an orientation that strongly
correlates with democratic values.
In Ukraine, as in Russia, the index of economic indoctrination has the
strongest impact on the variation in democratic values. Ukraine, however,
shows different demographic and attitudinal cleavages. Those with a high
desire for strong leadership, those who do not believe that Stalin's accomplishments are undervalued and urban residents are more supportive of democracy,
even controlling for economic orientation. Level of education does not have a
strong independent impact, as it does in Russia.
In Lithuania, as elsewhere, the index of economic indoctrination is a key
explanatory variable, but two others stand out as well: whether the respondent
is ethnically Russian (if so, he or she is less likely to have supportive values)
and the respondent's desire for order (a high desire for order reduces the
likelihood that he or she has supportive values). The desire for order has a
strong negative impact even after controlling for the difference between Russians and Lithuanians. Recall that a desire for order is postulated to be salient
in Russia, not in Lithuania. Even when we control for other factors, the age of
the respondent exerts a significant influence on the distribution of democratic
values. Note, though, that in Lithuania the young are less likely to hold values
supportive of democracy when we control for the greater propensity of the
young to reject Soviet economic norms. This seems likely to reflect the higher
proportion of the Lithuanian sample who grew up prior to the imposition of
Soviet power.
Overall, the desire for strong leadership is positively associated with support
for democratic values. This would be unexpected to those who presume that a
desire for strong leadership forms part of an 'authoritarian', or anti-democratic
political culture. It raises fascinating questions about the understandings of
"democracy' held by citizens of the post-Soviet states, questions that are outside the scope of this article. We will note, though, that the questions referred
to in the measure of desire for strong leadership ask respondents to react to the
desirability of a few trusted, competent, or strong leaders making the decisions.
Thus, those desiring strong leadership were not expressing a wish for arbitrary
or harmful leadership. Rather, they were expressing a desire for 'good government' by means of finding the proper leaders and allowing them to govern.
Even so, many would say that, unless the populace values widespread participation in decision making, authoritarian rule is easier to live with. Our
data suggests that an alternative conception of democracy holds sway
among many in the former Soviet Union. Democratic theorists from
Schumpeter and Schattschneider through Przeworski have downplayed the
TABLE
5
Regression of the Index of Democratic Values on Demographic and Attitudinal Variables,
1992
Lithuania
Russia
Ukraine
Year of birth
Standardized coefficient
- 0.001 ( - .247)
- 0.008
- 0.004 ( - 1.193)
- 0.048
- 0.012 ( - 2.826)
- 0.166
Education level
Standardized coefficient
0.183 (6.214)
0.204
0.031 (0.696)
0.028
O.oI8 (0.341)
0.019
Urban residence*
Standardized coefficient
0.121 (1.047)
0.034
0.343 (2.917)
0.119
- 0.286 ( - 1.892)
- 0.105
Desire for strong leadership
Standardized coefficient
0.064 (0.973)
0.031
0.222 (2.652)
0.107
0.029 (0.342)
0.019
Desire for order
Standardized coefficient
- 0.126 ( - 2.579)
- 0.098
- 0.046 ( - 0.820)
- 0.033
- 0.220 ( - 3.297)
- 0.190
Stalin now undervalued
Standardized coefficient
- 0.041 ( - 1.093)
- 0.038
- 0.178 (3.574)
- 0.146
- 0.062 (1.270)
- 0.071
Economic indoctrination
Standardized coefficient
- 0.076 ( - 6.353)
- 0.249
- 0.074 ( - 4.728)
- 0.200
- 0.058 ( - 3.287)
- 0.190
N
0'1
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Cl
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.
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::......
r
r
tIl
EO
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tIl
en
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)-
- 0.335 ( - 1.876)
- 0.103
Ethnic Russian *
Standardized coefficient
Adjusted r for the equation
Sample size
*Yes
=
1
0.17
853
0.12
0.09
630
316
z
0
::):r:
tIl
)t!
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
217
importance of widespread mass participation as a requisite element of democracy, stressing elite competition instead. 46 In this view, democracy is served by
the citizens being able to choose between competing parties, each able to form
a government that concentrates a large amount of power in the hands of a few
politicians (the British Prime Minister and cabinet, for example, face comparatively few constraints on their actions if a legislative majority can be
maintained). 'Good government' and public control over the government derive not from the public being involved in decision making but by the periodic
ability to vote out of office a sitting government that has not produced the
desired results. If the urban, better-educated respondents view democracy in
this fashion, that would explain the correlation between the measure of desire
for strong leadership and democratic values.
To further clarify how demographic groupings influence the strength of
democratic values, we contrast those respondents who were most supportive of
democracy on our index (i.e., those who scored four or five out of five possible)
with the remaining respondents along several pertinent dimensions. As Table
6 reveals, the group with values most supportive of democracy includes more
urban residents and more males and is younger, better educated, less religious,
wealthier and more politically active than respondents in the other group. Each
characteristic remains true for all three societies under examination.
These differences have noteworthy political consequences. In Figure 13, we
portray the average score on the index of democratic values in each of three
socio-economic strata: rural respondents, urban respondents whose highest
level of education is secondary school or lower, and urban respondents who
obtained at least some higher education. This breakdown is roughly equivalent
to rural, blue-collar and white-collar segments of society. The gap between
Lithuania and the two Slavic societies is largest among the rural respondents,
weaker but still statistically significant for the blue-collar respondents and has
completely disappeared, in the sense of statistical significance, among the
white-collar respondents. In pondering the chances for Russian versus Lithuanian democratization, one would have to take into account the finding that
democratic values are almost equally high in both societies' urban professionals. Members of the urban professional stratum are more likely to be both
active and influential in any society. They were clearly the predominant movers
in the transformation of the USSR in the Gorbachev era. Their values might
well be more important in assessing the prospects for democratization than the
mean for the society as a whole. Table 6 reinforces the likelihood that those
with values supportive of democracy are more likely to be influential by revealing that they tend to be younger, to have higher incomes and to report
themselves as having been more participatory.
46 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 2nd edn (New York: Harper and
Bros., 1942); E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1942); and Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in
Eastern Europe and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
218
TABLE
REISINGER, MILLER, HESLI AND MAHER
6
'Portraits' of Those with Values Most Supportive of Democracy
and Those Without, 1992
Among those who scored
highly (4-5) on the
Index of Democratic Values
Average age
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania
Among those who
scored 0-3 on the
Index of Democratic Values
39
40
41
43
42
42
Average educational achievement* and percentage of sample
with at least some higher education (in parentheses)
3.75 (19%)
Russia
4.56 (38%)
3.21 (8%)
Ukraine
3.62 (17%)
3.34 (9%)
Lithuania
3.61 (16%)
Percentage of sample living in urban areas
Russia
84%
77%
Ukraine
Lithuania
70%
75%
60%
70%
Percentage of sample indicating no religious affiliation
Russia
54%
Ukraine
53%
Lithuania
32%
48%
44%
22%
Males as a percentage of sample
Russia
52%
50%
Ukraine
Lithuania
53%
43%
40%
42%
Average monthly income in rubles
6,503
Russia
Ukraine
5,136
Lithuania
7,527
5,638
4,095
7,067
Percentage of sample that has signed a petition, participated
in a rally or joined a political/social group
Russia
54%
Ukraine
52%
72%
Lithuania
45%
31%
61%
* 1 = Up to 4th grade; 2 = Up to 8th grade; 3 = Complete secondary;
4 = Prof.ltechnical; 5 = Some higher education; 6 = Higher; 7 = Graduate
CONCLUSIONS
In the course of testing three prominent but competing views of what has
shaped mass political values in the former Soviet Union, we have shown that
neither historical heritage nor regime ideological orientation fares very well.
Examining the demographic cleavages produced by societal changes that fall
under the rubric of modernization produces more useful insights. At the same
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
219
~
o
u
(/)
Ql
Ol
~
Ql
~
Rural
Urban, Low
Locale, Education Level
Urban, High
Fig. 13. Mean democratic values by social stratum
Source: 1992 University of Iowa New Soviet Citizen Survey
Index of democratic values, 0
=
Low; 5
=
High
T-tests of differences between means for each pair of
countries, by social statum
Rural
Russia-Ukraine
Significance
Russia-Lithuania
Significance
Ukraine-Lithuania
Significance
- 1.38
0.169
- 5.87
0.000
- 4.82
0.000
Urban, Low
- 3.35
0.001
- 4.08
0.000
- 1.07
0.285
Urban, High
- 1.55
0.121
- 0.56
0.575
0.61
0.543
time, even moving to this within-society level of analysis fails to account for
a large proportion of the variance in political values held by Russian, Ukrainian
and Lithuanian citizens. One can only partially understand these citizens' belief
systems by identifying their membership in national, class or other groupings.
The complex distribution of Soviet values helps explain the rapidity of
political change after 1985. Despite the 'stagnation' of much official policy
under Brezhnev, the demographic, educational and economic trends of preceding decades had produced a highly complex society, many of whose members
held values conducive to fundamental changes. As society became increasingly
complex and 'modern', so did the membership of the Communist party and the
ranks of party and state bureaucrats, both in Moscow and throughout the
regions. Gorbachev's calls for change were heard and acted upon in different,
hard-to-predict ways by various groups in society and within the elite. Although scholars writing prior to 1985 were right to emphasize the vested
interests that many elites had in preserving the existing Soviet system, this
represented only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin - multiple
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constituencies for change - was much more difficult to see because of restrictions on access.
In addition, our data challenge those who rule out successful democratic
consolidation because the Russian or Ukrainian or Lithuanian people lack a
political culture that is ready for it. Our findings therefore support recent work
by Hahn and Gibson, Ouch and Tedin.47 Of course, democratic consolidation
in postcommunist societies will depend on elite values and strategies as well as
on mass values. 48 Without predicting successful democratization on the basis
of these findings, we do argue that the distribution of political values is unlikely
to be the primary roadblock.
Because of Lithuania's Central European heritage and because it entered the
Soviet Union later than the other two societies, some have presumed that
Lithuanians will be less authoritarian, less indoctrinated by communist ideology and, therefore, more democratic. Yet in 1992, Lithuanians and Russians do
not significantly differ in their desire for strong leadership and for order. Also,
the Lithuanians do not have a sharply more 'democratic' intelligentsia than do
Russia and Ukraine. If Lithuania's prospects for democratization are in fact
stronger, the strength may have less to do with overall societal acceptance of
democratic values and more to do with the common acceptance of democratic
values across its social classes. Lithuanian farmers endorse democratic values
almost as frequently as their urban counterparts. This is not true in Russia and
Ukraine.
Further, the evidence that 'modernization' during this century has
shaped political values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania could mean that
post-Soviet publics will maintain for some time their current levels of
receptivity to democracy. Increased or decreased support will emerge slowly
through generational replacement. A counter hypothesis is worth noting, however. Alexander Tsipko has argued that Gorbachev's reforms from 1987 on
constituted a 'moral revolution' that changed Soviet society fundamentally by
calling into question long-accepted Stalinist institutions and orientations. 49
This raises the possibility that the more widespread acceptance of pro-democratic values among urban intellectuals and white-collar workers reflects the
47 Hahn, 'Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture'; Gibson, Duch and Tedin, 'Cultural
Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union'.
48 Recent works advocating an elite perspective on democratization include Adam Przeworski,
'Some Problems in the Study of the Transition to Democracy', in Guillermo O'Donnell, Phillipe C.
Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, eds, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for
Democracy, Part III (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 47-63; Guiseppe
di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990); and Michael Burton, Richard Gunther and John Higley, 'Introduction: Elite
Transformations and Democratic Regimes', in Higley and Gunther, eds, Elites and Democratic
Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1992), pp. 1-37. (In May 1992, we surveyed a sample of members of parliament and executive
officials in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania. These politicians generally scored higher on the measures of pro-democratic orientation presented above than did the mass respondents.)
49 Alexander S. Tsipko, Is Stalinism Really Dead? The Future of Perestroilw as a Moral Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
221
differential impact of this 'moral revolution' on different parts of society, not
differences in life-long values. Without evidence that the better educated and
younger held the same values prior to perestroika, one cannot rule out the
possibility that they show higher levels of pro-democratic values because they
have reacted more strongly to the dominant intellectual current of their time.
Even if modernization processes are central, breaking down the members of
these societies into standard demographic groupings must be only a first step.
Our results do not always find the expected value distinctions across groupings.
Urban respondents, for instance, tend to value strong leadership more and to
have greater support for Stalin's contributions while simultaneously showing
more widespread democratic values. Attitudinal measures must also guide the
search for which groups within a society will form constituencies for democracy. One can determine the attitudinal soil of democracy in these societies
only by examining directly the patterns of political values.
APPENDIX: DESCRIPTION OF THE MEASURES EMPLOYED
Index of Desire for Strong Leadership
Respondents could fully agree (I), agree (2), disagree (4) or disagree fully (5), or not
be able to say exactly (3), with the following statements:
(1) Popular participation is not necessary if decision making is left in the hands of a
few trusted, competent leaders.
(2) It will always be necessary to have a few strong people actually making decisions.
The index assigns a score of I to those who either agreed or fully agreed with one of
these statements, 2 to those who either agreed or fully agreed with both and 0 to the
others.
Index of Desire for Order
Respondents could fully agree (I), agree (2), disagree (4) or disagree fully (5), or not
be able to say exactly (3), with the following statements:
(1) It is better to live in an orderly society than to allow people so much freedom that
they become disruptive.
(2) Political reform in this country is moving too rapidly.
(3) It is very important to stop crime even at the risk of violating the rights of the
accused.
The index assigns a score of I to those who either agreed or fully agreed with one of
these statements; 2 to those who either agreed or fully agreed with both; 3 to those who
either agreed or fully agreed with all three; and 0 to the others.
View of Stalin
Respondents could disagree fully (I), disagree (2), agree (4) or fully agree (5), or not
be able to say exactly (3), with the following statement:
These days, Stalin is not given adequate credit for his positive role in our history.
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Index of Economic Indoctrination
Respondents were asked:
(1) Speaking only of [republic/country of interview], what type of property would be
best: private property, collective property or only state property?
Respondents were asked to indicate whether
(2) Businessmen have too much, too little or the right amount of influence on life and
politics.
Respondents were asked to choose where to place himself or herself on a 7-point scale:
(3) Some people say the government of [republic/country of interview] should guarantee everyone work and a high standard of living, others argue that every person
should look after himself. On a scale from I to 7, where I signifies that the
government guarantees everyone work and 7 that every person should look after
himself, which position corresponds to your position?
Respondents could fully agree (1), agree (2), disagree (4) or disagree fully (5), or not
be able to say exactly (3), with the following statements:
(4) Economic reform must be pursued, even if it means significant hardship for the
people.
(5) There should be a mechanism regulating income such that no one earns very much
more than others.
Respondents were asked to rate various groups on a scale from I to 5, with 5 being the
most positive score. Using this scale, the respondents rated
(6) Those who work in co-operative (private) enterprises.
The index adds together the scores for these six variables, reversed if necessary so that
a high score indicates acceptance of Soviet economic norms, and then subtracting 6
from each resulting value so that the lowest value will be zero. The index therefore runs
from 0 (least supportive of regime norms, least hostile to market economics) to 21
(most supportive of regime norms, most hostile to market economics). All six variables
were available only for 1992.
Interpersonal Trust
'Some people we've talked with say that most people can be trusted. Others say you
can't be too careful in your dealings with other people. How do you feel about this?
[Can be trusted vs. Must be careful],
Party Competition
Respondents could fully agree (1), agree (2), disagree (4) or disagree fully (5), or not
be able to say exactly (3), with the following statement:
Competition among many political parties will make the political system stronger.
Opposition to the Government
Respondents could fully agree (I), agree (2), disagree (4) or disagree fully (5), or not
be able to say exactly (3), with the following statement:
Any individual or organization has the right to organize opposition or resistance to
any governmental initiative.
Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania
223
Postmaterial Values
'There is a lot of talk these days about what the goals of the country should be for the
next ten years. On this card are listed several goals which different people would give
top priority. If you had to pick, which of the listed goals would you consider the most
important? The second most important?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Maintaining order in the country
Giving people more influence over important government decisions
Fighting rising prices
Protecting freedom of speech.'
Rights Orientation
'On this card are some civil rights and liberties. For each of these, can you tell me if
you think they should always be observed or does it depend on the situation?
I. Freedom of speech
2. Freedom of association, to join groups
3. Religious liberty, freedom of conscience.'
The index ranges from 0 to 3 points depending on how many of the three the respondent
saw as needing always to be observed.
Index of Democratic Values
The index comes from adding the following three variables:
(I) I if agree or fully agree that party competition helps the political system; 0 otherwise.
(2) I if agree or fully agree that any individual or group can oppose the government;
o otherwise.
(3) The index of rights orientation from 0--3
The score can therefore range from 0 to 5.