When the Soviet Union unexpectedly collapsed in 1991, the world observed the developments, trying to guess where they would lead. The common hope inside and outside the former Soviet Union was that after decades of debilitating socialism, the new countries would rush to real democracy and the free market. Early surveys of public opinion in post-Soviet Russia prompted sociologistsâ optimistic prognoses (Reisinger 1993, p. 274; Shlapentokh 1998, pp. 28â52). In the turbulent transitional period that followed, the ambivalent political and electoral behavior of the post-Soviet âsubjects-turned-citizensâ puzzled observers and instigated speculations about the political and cultural traditions of the population and the extent of its democratic political culture. In the 2000s, Russian citizens showed strong support for their president, Vladimir Putin, who, though associated with the countryâs economic growth, imposed increasingly authoritarian politics, suppressing free media and taming the judicial system. To the dismay of Russian liberals, the high ratings of this former KGB officer and his repetitive reelections to high office demonstrated a political culture that seemed far from the ideals of liberal democracy. The New Russia Barometer studies showed support for the ruling regime in Russia (36â39% in the 1990s and growing in the 2000s to 84%), reflecting economic growth, a preference for stability, and, possibly, acceptance of an authoritarian trend in politics (Rose et al. 2011, p. 77).
Gradually, it became clear that this ambivalent Russian transition was not unique, but paralleled the experience of other countries. In the last decades of the twentieth century various transformations opened the doors for democratization, and many nations, while proclaiming democratic reforms, displayed developments quite different from the Western liberal model. And it happened not only to the majority of newly independent countries in the post-Soviet spaceâthe Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia. Many other developing countriesâVenezuela, Pakistan, and the majority of African countriesâevolved into sham democracies, where electionsâa cornerstone of democracyâtook place but constitutional liberties are praised in theory but violated in practice. Fareed Zakaria defined this phenomenon as the rise of âilliberal democraciesâ; others have defined it as ânominalâ constitutionalism, âmanagedâ democracy, or competitive authoritarianism. Yes, elections take place, but the population too often votes for illiberal policies and authoritarian figures who shape their regimes with weak legislatures and judiciaries which gradually mutate into dictatorships. This perplexing process stimulated new interest in what structures the behavior of citizens and their support for authoritarian or illiberal regimes.
In various specific circumstances, many interrelated factors determine human behavior and the direction of social transformationâeconomic (both personal and systemic), political, cultural, and demographic (the âyouth bulgeâ).1 Lucien Pye, a proponent of modernization theory, emphasized the emancipatory energies of modernization (among them urbanization, education, mobility, technology) as additional components that determine the outcome of change in authoritarian regimes (Sakwa 2008, p. 456). Other scholars have highlighted that the rapidity of modernization and the catastrophic events of the twentieth century in Russia might have produced conditions unfavorable for the democratic choice. All Russian revolutionsâof 1905, 1917, and 1991âasserted modernization and democracy, but the resulting regimes finally stubbornly drifted in an authoritarian direction. Thus, scholars and the educated public are left to ponder whether Russia possesses the cultural conditions for successful democratization or an inherent proclivity for authoritarianism. Is Russian political culture fundamentally unreceptive to democratic institutions? Or did the Soviet modernization project, even in its authoritarian shape, unavoidably mold conditions for democratization and pluralism that also transform social attitudes? This book contributes to these debates by its historical analysis of popular opinions of the Soviet people in the 1930s, reflective of mass political culture.
In explaining the political behavior of the masses, the concept of political culture is instrumental. âPolitical cultureâ is defined by the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences as âthe set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system.â The political culture of the party elite, especially of Stalin, has received much attention from scholars, mostly because of the more immediate outcomes of such studies in foreign affairs and diplomatic applications and the accessibility of the sources (public pronouncements, for example). (Among many, see Tucker 1972; van Ree 2002.) This elite culture is generally described as rooted in the underground and Civil War experience, with such features as a confrontational Manichean worldview, dogmatic and wishful thinking, and with militant elements rejecting compromiseâa culture wracked by fear and suspicion of internal and external plots and enemies (Getty and Naumov 1999, pp. 15â24). Now, the availability of new serial sources makes the study of mass political culture in Stalinism possibleânot in general suppositions, but documented as a specific belief system in a specific time period.
Interest in the mental and political dispositions of Soviet citizens and the problematic prospects of democratic transformation emerged in the 1970s and understandably increased in the 1990s. But this interest was hardly new. Margaret Mead, for example, studied the mindset of the Soviet people in the 1950s, using the tools of anthropology, and called it authoritarian. Since her study, the historiography debate has evolved from two major positions. One view argues that Russian political culture has a strong authoritarian coloration and is poorly prepared for democratic and liberal development due to the countryâs historical experience not favorable for liking freedom, affinity for collectivism over individualism, and its dislike of private property (Biryukov and Sergeev 1993; Brown 1989; White 1979 and others). Focusing mostly on the elite and the governmentâs political culture, these historical and cultural determinists emphasized the disposition of Russians for authoritarianism, though such views were sometimes politically motivated.
An alternative view emphasizes the plurality of elements in Russian national traditions, the multidirectional potential of the cultural sphere, and dismantles the theory of autocratic destiny. Richard Sakwa (2008, p. 355), Nicolai Petro (1995), and James Millar (1987) believe that modernization per se organically produces new forces and new attitudes, sometimes even in dying social groups like the nobility or peasantry. Societies develop, though unevenly and at different paces. Even during reactionary or stagnant periods, a democratic potential exists, as, for example, in the âMiraculous Decadeâ in the 1840s when Russian intelligentsia emerged under the police regime of Nicholas I. After its apex at the beginning of the twentieth century, the civil culture existing outside of officialdom never died, even in the USSR, and was exemplified by antiregime resistance, dissent, a dissident movement, religious opposition, samizdat (the clandestine copying of forbidden literature), a subculture of rumors and anecdotes, semiunderground charity, bard songs, and the hiking movement of the 1970s.
A common concern of scholars is that political culture studies sometimes select arbitrary facts from the past and a culture, disregarding the peculiarities of each historical periods, to arrive at their conclusions. The objective of this case study in Soviet political culture is to analyze methodically the corpus of archival sources, never before approached from the angle of political culture, and to place the popular comments and opinions about the constitution into the political, economic, cultural, and social context of the 1930s. The mass political culture of the 1930s can now be documented on a new level of historical, cultural, and methodological knowledge.
Studies of Russian-Soviet society at specific periods, for example at the beginning (Figes and Kolonitsky) and end (Rose, Lukin) of the Soviet period, pointed out the weak basis for liberal democracy in the political culture. Medushevsky and Lewin support this view for the Stalinist period.
Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitsky reviewed the political symbolism and language of workers and peasants in 1917 and argued âthere was no real cultural or social foundation for the liberal conception of democracy in Russia, at least not in the midst of a violent revolutionâ. If the liberal intelligentsia understood democracy in terms of the constitution, parliament, and the rule of law, workers and urbanites rather saw it as synonymous with the power of the common people. During the public debate about democracy in 1917, this notion, in contrast to the liberalsâ inclusive meaning of democracy, was understood among the masses as the exclusive idea of class conflict. The authors maintain that the discourse of exclusion and dichotomous views, which they observed in revolutionary 1917, had deep roots in Russian culture (Figes and Kolonitsky 1999, pp. 122â3, 189).
The view that the political culture under Stalinism had powerful roots in the traditionalist Russian peasant culture is accepted by many as a given. Moshe Lewin emphasized not only the religious-autocratic traditions of the societyâstate nexus in establishing Stalinâs new autocracy, but also the impact of rural religiosity on polity, however secular and committed to rationalism. Reacting to the tremendous changes around them, the peasant majority transformed and adjusted instructions, propaganda, fashions, and images through specific cultural filters. The pressure of these traditional and peasant grassroots, stated by Lewin as a conservative force, molded polity: âThe social matrix was breeding just that: authoritarianism.â The historical traditions of stateâsociety relations, plus the homogeneous, commune-focused, illiterate or semiliterate peasantry, as well as the âbackslide of 1917â1921â which debilitated the social basis (the peasantry retreated into a more archaic mode and the working class lost âmany of its experienced and sophisticated layersâ), made Russia strongly conducive and favorable to authoritarianism. Waves of crises brought disorientation, depersonalization, and loss of identity; Bolshevik acculturation was marred by deculturation (the shallowing of the cultural elite) and a cultural âvoidâ when peasants lost their old values but did not acquire new ones quickly enough (Lewin 1985, pp. 274, 304â11, 314). Lewinâs last point about the homogeneity and inflexibility of the peasantry was challenged by recent studies of the Peasant Union movement in the first third of the twentieth century, which showed the political and social maturation of the peasantry at its most entrepreneurial part (Seregny 1988; Kurenyshev 2004; Velikanova 2013, pp. 118â59). This growth of bourgeois and civil values in the peasantry cannot now be ignored. The resulting two political culturesâtraditional and Bolshevik, according to Lewinâappear more nuanced today. The new complexity and the intricacies of this changing identity was revealed also in the peasant-turned-workersâ diaries, notably Andrei Arzhilovskyâs.
Since political culture is the product of both collective history and the life histories of individuals, the private experiences described in diaries and personal letters provide deeper insights into the culture. The debates on liberal and illiberal subjectivity introduce an intimate dimension and lifespan temporality to the formation of Soviet political culture. While the political culture concept examines the multitudes, social groups, and formation of collective identity, the cultural trend in historiography and the newly available personal sources stimulate studies of individual subjectivity. Defined as a reflexive self that possesses self-awareness, subjectivity formation and the search for identity were both pursued by individuals and promoted by the state project of the New Soviet Man. In parallel to the dynamics of political and social currents and shifts, the diaries pointedly reveal the dynamics of perso...