¹ 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 Reisinger, William M., ‘Conclusions: Mass Public Opinion and the Study of Post-Soviet Societies’, in Miller, Arthur H., Reisinger, William M. and Hesli, Vicki L., eds. Public Opinion and Regime Change: The New Politics of Post-Soviet Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), pp. 271–7, at pp. 272–3.Google Scholar

² Studies of these issues include Bahry, Donna, ‘Politics, Generations and Change in the USSR,’ in Millar, James R., ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 61–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gitelman, Zvi, ‘Soviet Political Culture: Insights from Jewish Emigres’, Soviet Studies, 29 (1977), 543–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inkeles, Alex and Bauer, Raymond, Wie Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Silver, Brian, ‘Political Beliefs of the Soviet Citizen: Sources of Support for Regime Norms,’Google Scholar in Millar, , Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR, pp. 100–41Google Scholar; and White, Stephen, ‘The USSR: Patterns of Autocracy and Industrialism’, in Brown, Archie and Gray, Jack, eds. Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States, 2nd edn (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979). pp. 25–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Following Almond's influential work, a society's political orientations are commonly referred to under the rubric ‘political culture’. See Almond, Gabriel, ‘Comparative Political Systems’, Journal of Politics, 18 (1956), 391–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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 culture theorists to agree on a definition of the 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 Lane, Ruth, ‘Political Culture: Residual Category or General Theory?’ Comparative Political Studies, 25 (1992), 362–87.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ See Inkeles, and Bauer, , The Soviet CitizenGoogle Scholar; White, , ‘The USSR’Google Scholar; Franceisco, Wayne Di and Gitelman, Zvi, ‘Soviet Political Culture and “Covert Participation’ in Policy Implementation’, American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 603–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the contributions to Millar, , ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life.Google Scholar In each of these cases, the authors discuss possible sources of bias from interviewing émigrés and are careful to choose their analyses so as to minimize the bias.

⁵ As a prominent proponent, Eckstein, Harry, notes in ‘A Culturalist Theory of Political Change’, American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 789–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ See Keenan, Edward L., ‘Muscovite Political Folkways’, The Russian Review, 45 (1986), 115–84, pp. 124–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Crouch, Martin, Revolution and Evolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Politics (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1989), pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

⁷ See Denisovsky, Gennady M., Kozyreva, Polina M. and Matskovsky, Mikhail S., ‘Twelve Percent of Hope: Economic Consciousness and Market Reform’Google Scholar, in Miller, , Reisinger, and Hesli, , Public Opinion and Regime Cliange, pp. 224–38.Google Scholar

⁸ Those mentioning messianic expansionism include Tucker, Robert C., ‘The Image of Dual Russia’, in Black, Cyril, ed., The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 587–605Google Scholar; Crouch, , Revolution and Evolution, p. 90Google Scholar; and Smith, Gordon B., Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change, 2nd edn (New York: St Martin's Press, 1991), p. 7.Google ScholarSmith, , Soviet Politics, also lists inefficacy (pp. 13–14)Google Scholar, fatalism (p. 5)Google Scholar, dogmatism (p. 6)Google Scholar and intolerance (p. 6).Google Scholar Gibson and Duch examine the level of intolerance in the Soviet Union with recent survey data. See Gibson, James L., Duch, Raymond M. and Tedin, Kent, ‘Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union’, Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 329–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gibson, and Duch, , ‘Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture’Google Scholar, in Miller, , Reisinger, and Hesli, , Public Opinion and Regime Change, pp. 69–94.Google Scholar

⁹ Those who stress the Russian desire for a strong leader include Pipes, Richard, Russia Under the Old Regime (New York: Scribner's, 1974)Google Scholar; White, , ‘The USSR’Google Scholar; Crouch, , Revolution and Evolution, p. 88Google Scholar; and Smith, , Soviet Politics, p. 12.Google ScholarPipes, and White, (pp. 29–30)Google Scholar discuss patrimonialism as an aspect of Russian political culture. For pertinent results from émigré surveys, see Inkeles, and Bauer, , The Soviet Citizen, pp. 246–7Google Scholar; and Gitelman, , ‘Soviet Political Culture’, p. 559.Google Scholar The more recent findings of support for strong leadership are in Bialer, Seweryn, ‘Is Socialism Dead?’ in Jervis, Robert and Bialer, Seweryn, eds, Soviet-American Relations After the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 98–106.Google Scholar Social psychologists have also sought in recent years to apply scales that measure psychological ‘authoritarianism’ to Russian samples. For an example using a small quota sample of Muscovites in 1991, see Sam McFarland, G., Ageyev, Vladimir S. and Aabalakina-Paap, Marina, ‘Authoritarianism in the Former Soviet Union’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63 (1992), 1004–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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 Bialer, Seweryn, Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability and Change in the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 145–6Google Scholar; Crouch, , Revolution and Evolution, p. 88Google Scholar; and Smith, , Soviet Politics, p. 12.Google Scholar Those stressing a love of order among Russians usually acknowledge a recurrent fascination with anarchy (though see McAuley, Mary's critique of White, ‘The USSR’Google Scholar for failing to note this, in ‘Political Culture and Communist Politics: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’, in Brown, Archie, ed., Political Culture and Communist Studies (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1984), pp. 13–39, at pp. 16–17).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Even so, observers typically see the desire for order as predominant.

¹¹ 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. Schopflin, 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’ (Schopflin, George, ‘The Political Traditions of Eastern Europe’, in Graubard, Stephen R., ed., Eastern Europe – Central Europe – Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), pp. 59–94. at p. 65).Google Scholar

¹² Ash, Timothy Gorton, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (Cambridge: Granta Books, 1989)Google Scholar; Rupnik, Jacques, ‘Central Europe or Mitteleuropa?’Google Scholar in Graubard, , ed., Eastern Europe – Central Europe – Europe, pp. 233–65Google Scholar and Goldfarb, Jeffrey, After the Fall: The Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe (New York: Basic Books, 1992).Google Scholar

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 residents immigrated in recent decades. In Lithuania, it quite clearly did matter whether Russian or Lithuanian. Elsewhere, it did not.

¹⁴ For example, Keenan, , ‘Muscovite Political Folkways’.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cf. McAuley, , ‘Political Culture and Communist Studies’, p. 22.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Meyer, Alfred G., ‘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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ See Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Barghoorn, Frederick C. and Remington, Thomas W., Politics in the USSR, 3rd edn (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1986), pp. 130–64Google Scholar; Remington, Thomas F., ‘Words and Deeds: CPSU Ideological Work’, in Sacks, Michael Paul and Pankhurst, Jerry G., eds, Understanding Soviet Society (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 147–63.Google Scholar With regard to Eastern Europe, see McGregor, James P., ‘Value Structures in a Developed Socialist System’, Comparative Politics, 23 (1991), 181–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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 Jowitt, Kenneth, ‘Political Culture in Leninist Regimes’, in Jowitt, , New World Disorder: Vie Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 50–87, p. 293.Google Scholar

²⁰ See McGregor, , ‘Value Structures in a Developed Socialist System’, p. 183.Google Scholar

²¹ Bialer, , ‘Is Socialism Dead?’ p. 100.Google Scholar 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 percent 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. 35Google Scholar, 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 Feher, Ferenc, ‘Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation in Soviet-Type Societies’, in Rigby, T. H. and Feher, Ferenc, eds, Political Legitimation in Communist States (New York: St. Martin's, 1982), pp. 64–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Inkeles, and Bauer, , ‘The Soviet Citizen’, pp. 233–54.Google Scholar For analyses of the interviews with émigrés conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, see Gitelman, , ‘Soviet Political Culture’, and Millar, James R., ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar Recent in-country survey results are reported in Hahn, Jeffrey W., ‘Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture’, British Journal of Political Science, 21 (1991), 393–421CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, James L., Duch, Raymond M. and Tedin, Kent L., ‘Cultural Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union’, Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 329–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gibson, and Duch, , ‘Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture’.Google Scholar

²⁵ Hahn, , ‘Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture’, p. 417Google Scholar, 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 formative experiences. See Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard, Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and Their Parents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Flanagan, Scott, ‘Changing Values in Advanced Industrial Society’, Comparative Political Studies, 14 (1982), 403–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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 SuccessorsGoogle Scholar; and Hough, Jerry F., Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1980).Google Scholar

²⁷ Cohen, Stephen F., Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), chap. 4.Google Scholar

²⁸ For data on literacy and education levels among Soviet citizens, see Lewis, Robert A., ‘The Universality of Demographic Processes in the USSR’, in Sacks, Michael Paul and Pankhurst, Jerry G., eds, Understanding Soviet Society (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman. 1988), pp. 97–115.Google Scholar

²⁹ For a review, see Almond, Gabriel A., ‘The Development of Political Development’, in Weiner, Myron and Huntington, Samuel P., eds. Understanding Political Development (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1987). pp. 437–90.Google Scholar

³⁰ Hough, Jerry F., Russia and the West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988)Google Scholar; Lewin, Mothe. The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Connor, Walter D., The Accidental Proletariat; Workers, Politics and Crisis in Gorbachev's Russia (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ While, , ‘The USSR’, pp. 57–8.Google Scholar

³² Jowitt, , New World Disorder.Google Scholar

³³ See Bahry, , ‘Politics, Generations and Change in the USSR’Google Scholar; Zimmerman, William, ‘Mobilized Participation and the Nature of the Soviet Dictatorship’Google Scholar, in Millar, , ed., Politics. Work and Daily Life in the USSR, pp. 332–53Google Scholar; Hahn, , ‘Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture’Google Scholar; Kaplan, Cynthia, ‘New Forms of Political Participation’Google Scholar, in Miller, , Reisinger, and Hesli, , eds, Public Opinion and Regime Change, pp. 153–67.Google Scholar For results that modify the author's own earlier findings, see Zimmerman, William, ‘Intergenerational Differences Among Mass Publics and Foreign Policy’Google Scholar, in Miller, , Reisinger, and Hesli, , eds. Public Opinion and Regime Change, pp. 259–70.Google Scholar

³⁴ Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sydney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a recent re-affirmation of their claim, see Inglehart, Ronald, ‘The Renaissance of Political Culture’, American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 1203–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 30.Google Scholar

³⁶ Examples of those making such an argument include Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government (New York: Dutton, 1859 [1910])Google Scholar; Almond, and Verba, , The Civic CultureGoogle Scholar; Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar; Miller, Arthur H., ‘Political Issues and Trust in Government’, American Political Science Review, 68 (1974), 951–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Citrin, Jack, ‘Commentary’, American Political Science Review, 68 (1974), 973–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Muller, Edward N. and Jukam, Thomas O., ‘On the Meaning of Political Support’, American Political Science Review, 71 (1977), 1561–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ See Key, V. O., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961), pp. 536–7Google Scholar; and Inglehart, , ‘The Renaissance of Political Culture’.Google Scholar

³⁸ For evidence that interpersonal trust can correlate with non-democratic values, see Seligson, Mitchell and Muller, Edward N., ‘Political Culture in Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Latin America’, paper presented at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.Google Scholar

³⁹ Gibson, , Duch, and Tedin, , ‘Cultural Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union’.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Jowitt, , New World Disorder, p. 293.Google Scholar Other pessimists include Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Failure (New York: Scribner's, 1989)Google Scholar; and White, Stephen, ‘“Democratization” in the USSR’, Soviet Studies, 42 (1990), 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ For example, see Starr, S. Frederick, ‘Prospects for Stable Democracy in Russia’, Occasional Paper of the Mershon Center, Ohio State University, 1992Google Scholar; Hahn, , ‘Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture’Google Scholar; and Gibson, and Duch, , ‘Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture’.Google Scholar

⁴² For analyses based on the World Values survey, see Inglehart, , ‘The Renaissance of Political Culture’.Google Scholar

⁴³ See Inglehart, Ronald, Vie Silent Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Gibson, , Duch, and Tedin, , ‘Cultural Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union’.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Inglehart uses both trust and postmaterialism as democratic indicators in ‘The Renaissance of Political Culture’.

⁴⁶ Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 2nd edn (New York: Harper and Bros., 1942)Google Scholar; Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1942)Google Scholar; and Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁷ Hahn, , ‘Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture’Google Scholar; Gibson, , Duch, and Tedin, , ‘Cultural Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union’.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Recent works advocating an elite perspective on democratization include Przeworski, Adam, ‘Some Problems in the Study of the Transition to Democracy’, in O'Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Phillipe C. and Whitehead, Laurence, eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, Part III (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 47–63Google Scholar; di Palma, Guiseppe, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Burton, Michael, Gunther, Richard and Higley, John, ‘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.Google Scholar (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 Tsipko, Alexander S., Is Stalinism Really Dead? The Future of Perestroika as a Moral Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).Google Scholar