Article contents
Thinking about Democracy: Interviews with Russian Citizens
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Abstract
Using new evidence from forty-seven formal in-depth interviews conducted with Russian citizens in 1998 and 2000, this article dissects Russian popular attitudes toward democracy. Rather than asking the usual question—are Russians democratic enough for their new institutions—Carnaghan examines what Russians find troubling or difficult about their new political institutions and what they would change. Listening to Russian voices makes it clear that much of what looks like flawed support for some aspects of democracy, particularly the operation of legislative institutions and the role of law in organizing society, can be better understood as a fairly nuanced critique of the flawed operation of those institutions. Carnaghan's respondents like democracy in the abstract better than they like the version they have at home. Yet their disillusionment regarding the ability of ordinary citizens to influence officials also means that they are unwilling to work very hard to improve those institutions or to deepen the democracy they have.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2001
References
Research for this project was supported by Fulbright-Hays, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the American Political Science Association. Additional support from the Saint Louis University Beaumont Research Fund and the Dean's Office in the College of Arts and Sciences covered the cost of transcribing audiotapes. I wish to express my gratitude to the various people who helped me set up interviews: Polina Kozyreva, Mikhail Kosolapov, Nina Rostegaeva, Natal'ia Peshkova, and Ol'ga Iastrebova in Moscow; Tat'iana Bogomolova in Novosibirsk; Valentina Pervova in Krasnoiarsk; Arbakhan Magomedov in Ul'ianovsk; and Ol'ga Shcheglova in Voronezh. I am also beholden to some extremely capable transcribers: Felicia Wertz and the International Language Center in St. Louis and Zinaida Peikova in Moscow. Interpretations and translations, as well as mistakes, are my own. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Atlanta, Georgia, 2-5 September 1999, and was included in the Studies in Public Policy series of Strathclyde University. Donna Bahry, Steve Puro, and Lisa Pohlman provided valuable comments on earlier drafts.
1. Gibson, James L. and Duch, Raymond M., “Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture,” 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., 1993)Google Scholar; Gibson, James L., “The Struggle between Order and Liberty in Contemporary Russian Political Culture,” Australian Journal of Political Science 32, no. 2 (1997): 271-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, James L., “Putting Up with Fellow Russians: An Analysis of Political Tolerance in the Fledgling Russian Democracy,” Political Research Quarterly 51 (March 1998): 37–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Rose, Richard, “Postcommunism and the Problem of Trust, ‘'Journal of Democracy 5 (July 1994): 18–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, Richard and ShinDoh, Chull, Democratization Backwards: The Problem of Third Wave Democracies, Studies in Public Policy, no. 314 (Glasgow, 1999)Google Scholar; Whitefield, Stephen and Evans, Geoffrey, “Support for Democracy and Political Opposition in Russia, 1993-1995,” Post-Soviet Affairs 12 (July-September 1996): 227 Google Scholar; Hahn, Jeffrey W., “Changes in Contemporary Russian Political Culture,” in Tismaneanu, Vladimir, ed., Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y., 1995), 112-36.Google Scholar
3. Miller, Arthur H., Hesli, Vicki L., and Reisinger, William M., “Conceptions of Democracy among Mass and Elite in Post-Soviet Societies,” British Journal of Political Science 27, no. 2 (April 1997): 157-90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 4. I. M. Kliamkin, V. V. Lapkin, and V. I. Pantin, “Mezhdu avtoritarizmom i demokratiei,” Pofo 2, no. 26 (1995): 57-87.
5. Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., “Congruence Theory Applied: Democratization in Russia,” in Eckstein, Harry, Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., Hoffmann, Erik, and Reisinger, William M., eds., Can Democracy lake Root in Post-Soviet Russia? Explorations in State-Society Relations (Lanham, Md., 1998), 35–68.Google Scholar
6. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1930)Google Scholar; Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Newbury Park, Calif., 1989)Google Scholar; Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America (New York, 1956).Google Scholar
7. Putnam, Robert D., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993), 176, 183.Google Scholar
8. Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar; Aristotle, , The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Barker, Ernest (New York, 1946); Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, exp. ed. (1959; reprint, Baltimore, 1981).Google Scholar
9. In this case, “culture” and “structure” both imply that democracies are created in received conditions; democratic institutions do not much affect those conditions. On the similarity of those approaches, see Reisinger, William M., “Establishing and Strengthening Democracy,” in Grey, Robert D., ed., Democratic Theory and Post-Communist Change (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1997), 52–78.Google Scholar Putnam sees “culture” and “structure” as forming a mutually reinforcing equilibrium. See Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 180.
10. Migranian, Andranik, “Dolgii put’ k evropeiskomu domu,” Novyi mir, no. 7 (July 1989): 166-84.Google Scholar
11. Grossman, Vasilii, Forever Flowing, trans. Whitney, Thomas P. (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
12. Keenan, Edward L., “Muscovite Political Folkways,” Russian Review 45, no. 2 (April 1986): 115-81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Archie, “Ideology and Political Culture,” in Bialer, Seweryn, ed., Politics, Society, and Nationality inside Gorbachev's Russia (Boulder, Colo. 1989).Google Scholar
13. For a more detailed summary of results of recent survey research than space allows here, see Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., “Post-Soviet Political Culture in Russia: An Assessment of Recent Empirical Investigations,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 2 (March 1996): 225-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., and Ahl, Richard, “Does the Public Matter for Democratization in Russia? What We Have Learned from ‘Third Wave’ Transitions and Public Opinion Surveys,” in Eckstein, , Fleron, , Hoffmann, , and Reisinger, , eds., Can Democracy Take Root“? 287-330.Google Scholar
14. Hahn, Jeffrey W., “Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture,” British Journal ofPolitical Science 21 (October 1991): 393-41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tedin, Kent L., “Popular Support for Competitive Elections in the Soviet Union,” Comparative Political Studies 27 (July 1991): 241-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, James L., Duch, Raymond M., and Tedin, Kent L., “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union,“Journal of Politics 54 (May 1992): 329-71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15. For political efficacy, see Hahn, “Continuity and Change“; for the extension of rights, see Gibson and Duch, “Emerging Democratic Values“; and for these shortcomings reappearing in later studies, see Hahn, “Changes in Contemporary Russian Political Culture“; Gibson, “The Struggle between Order and Liberty“; Gibson, “Putting Up with Fellow Russians“; Gibson, James L., “A Sober Second Thought: An Experiment in Persuading Russians to Tolerate,” American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 3 (July 1998): 819-50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Iurii Levada, “'Chelovek sovetskii’ piat’ let spustia: 1989-1994 (predvaritel'nye itogi sravnitel'nogo issledovanniia),” Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: Informatsionnyi biulleten'— Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia 1 (January-February 1995): 9-14.
16. Bahry, Donna, “Society Transformed? Rethinking the Social Roots of Perestroika,” Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 512-54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, Richard and Carnaghan, Ellen, “Generational Effects on Attitudes to Communist Regimes: A Comparative Analysis,“ Post-Soviet Affairs, 11 no. 1 (January-March 1995): 28–56.Google Scholar
17. Kullberg, Judith S. and Zimmerman, William, “Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Democracy,” World Politics 51 (April 1999): 336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Finifter, Ada and Mickiewicz, Ellen, “Redefining the Political System of the USSR: Mass Support for Political Change,” American Political Science Review 186, no. 4 (December 1992): 857-74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duch, Raymond M., “Tolerating Economic Reform: Popular Support for Transition to a Free Market in the Former Soviet Union,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (September 1993): 590–608 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Arthur H., Hesli, Vicki L., and Reisinger, William M., “Reassessing Mass Support for Political and Economic Change in the Former USSR,” American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (June 1994): 399-411 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Arthur H., Reisinger, William M., and Hesli, Vicki L., “Understanding Political Change in Post-Soviet Societies: A Further Commentary on Finifter and Mickiewicz,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (March 1996): 153-66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brym, Robert J., “Re-evaluating Mass Support for Political and Economic Change in Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 5 (July 1996): 751-66.Google Scholar
18. Whitefield, Stephen and Evans, Geoffrey, “The Russian Election of 1993: Public Opinion and the Transition Experience,” Post-Soviet Affairs 10, no. 1 (1994): 38–60 Google Scholar; Whitefield and Evans, “Support for Democracy.“
19. Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger, “Conceptions of Democracy“; Iurii Levada, “Kompleksy obshchestvennogo mneniia (stat'ia vtoraia),” Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: Informatsionnyi biulleten'-Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia 1 (January-February 1997)- 7-12.
20. Kullberg and Zimmerman, “Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses,” 340.
21. Kliamkin, Lapkin, and Pantin, “Mezhdu avtoritarizmom i demokratiei,” 79.
22. Berezovskii, V. N., Krotov, N. I., and Grivenko, V. V., Neformal'naia Rossiia (Moscow, 1990)Google Scholar; Steven Fish, M., Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1995).Google Scholar
23. Belin, Laura and Orttung, Robert W., The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma (Armonk, N.Y., 1997).Google Scholar
24. Rogowski, Ronald, Rational Legitimacy: A Theory of Political Support (Princeton, 1974).Google Scholar
25. Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, The Federalist Papers (New York, 1961), 322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26. March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York, 1989), 52.Google Scholar See also March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (September 1984): 734-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27. Tarrow, Sidney, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge, Eng., 1994).Google Scholar
28. Ostrom, Elinor, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29. See, in particular, the debate originally published in the pages of The Journal of Democracy and republished as Juan Linz, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Donald Horowitz, “Comparing Democratic Systems,” Arend Lijphart, “Constitutional Choices for New Democracies,” Lardeyret, Guy, “The Problem with PR,” and Quentin Quade, “PR and Democratic Statecraft,” all in Diamond, Larry and Plattner, Marc F., eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy, 2d ed. (Baltimore, 1996), 124-42, 143-49, 162-74, 175-80, and 181-86.Google Scholar
30. Przeworski, Adam et al., Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge, Eng., 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similarly, see Elster, Jon, Offe, Claus, and Preuss, Ulrich K., Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (Cambridge, Eng., 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and O'Donnell, Guillermo and Schmitter, Philippe C., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, 1986).Google Scholar
31. Constitution of the Russian Federation, article 111, article 117, and article 90. For the constitution, see http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/rs00000_.html (last consulted 15 February 2001).
32. Bova, Russell, “Political Culture, Authority Patterns, and the Architecture of the New Russian Democracy,” in Eckstein, , Fleron, , Hoffmann, , and Reisinger, , eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 189.Google Scholar
33. O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 5 (January 1994): 55–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34. Vodolazov, Grigorii et al., “Demokratiia v Rossii: Samokritika i perspektivy,” Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost', 1995, no. 2:42.Google Scholar
35. Roeder, Philip, “Transitions from Communism: State-Centered Approaches,” in Eckstein, , Fleron, , Hoffmann, , and Reisinger, , eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 206.Google Scholar
36. Ginsburg, Benjamin, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” in Hall, John A., ed., States in History (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), 109-36.Google ScholarPubMed
37. Hough, Jerry, “The Russian Election of 1993: Public Attitudes toward Economic Reform and Democratization,” Post-Soviet Affairs 10, no. 1 (1994): 12.Google Scholar
38. William Mishler and Richard Rose, Trust in Untrustworthy Institutions: Culture and Institutional Performance in Post-Communist Societies, Studies in Public Policy no 310 (Glasgow, 1998).
39. Researchers disagree on whether economic hardship reduces support for democracy. For those who argue that it does, see Whitefield and Evans, “Russian Election of 1993“; Kullberg and Zimmerman, “Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses.” For the opposite view, see Duch, Raymond M., “Economic Chaos and the Fragility of Democratic Transition in Former Communist Regimes,” Journal of Politics 57 (February 1995): 121-58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, James L., “A Mile Wide but an Inch Deep (?): The Structure of Democratic Commitments in the Former USSR,” American Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (May 1996): 396–420 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hahn, “Changes in Contemporary Russian Political Culture.“
40. I am less concerned here with notions of minority rights, another common focus of opinion surveys, partly because protecting the rights of unpopular groups is not usually the job of the people as a whole; rather, it is the job of courts, constitutions, and other counter-majoritarian institutions. I leave the connection between democracy and free markets for another work because the relationship is too complicated for adequate treatment here.
41. All interviews were conducted in Russian. Most were conducted by the author; four, by a Russian colleague, Ol'ga Iastrebova. Interviews ranged in length from a minimum of about forty-five minutes to a maximum of over three hours. The interviews were taped, with the permission of the respondent. I also took copious notes, both as a backup in case the tape recorder failed and to distract the respondent from the tape recorder. The tape recorder did not seem to influence the respondents’ willingness to talk. The only times respondents asked me to turn it off were when they offered me food or were interrupted by phone calls, visitors, or wayward children. The tapes were transcribed in Russian by a native speaker, except for two cases where recording difficulties made that impossible. In those cases, I rely on the notes I took during the interview. Translations are my own. Volunteers for the interviews were solicited from among my acquaintances and by a variety of local researchers: Polina Kozyreva, Mikhail Kosolapov, Nina Rostegaeva, and Natal'ia Peshkova in Moscow; Tat'iana Bogomolova in Novosibirsk; Valentina Pervova in Krasnoiarsk; Ol'ga Shcheglova in Voronezh; and Arbakhan Magomedov in Ul'ianovsk. Most interviewees were offered a small stipend, although many of them refused it in 1998. Most accepted the stipend in 2000.
42. In any case, most of the attitudinal differences between urban and rural Russians can be explained by differences in education, age, and economic situation, attributes on which there is considerable variation in my sample. See Reisinger, William M., Miller, Arthur H., and Hesli, Vicki L., “Political Norms in Rural Russia: Evidence from Public Attitudes,” Europe-Asia Studies 47 (September 1995): 1025-42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
43. Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Jennifer Hochschild, , What's Fair? Americans'Attitudes toward Distributive Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1981).Google Scholar
44. For example, Ries, Nancy, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika (Ithaca, 1997).Google Scholar
45. Belson, William, Validity in Survey Research (Aldershot, Eng., 1986).Google Scholar
46. Ries, Russian Talk, 27-29.
47. Converse, Philip E., “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Apter, David, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York, 1964), 206-61.Google Scholar
48. Grushin, Boris, “Est’ li u nas obshchestvennoe mnenie?” Novoe vremia, 1988, no. 30:29–31.Google Scholar
49. Zaller, John and Feldman, Stanley, “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences,” American Journal of Political Science 36 (1992): 579–616 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bahry, Donna, “Comrades into Citizens? Russian Political Culture and Public Support for the Transition,” Slavic Review 58, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 841-53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50. See Elkins, David J., Manipulation and Consent: How Voters and Leaders Manage Complexity (Vancouver, 1993)Google Scholar; Schober, Michael F. and Conrad, Frederick G., “Does Conversational Interviewing Reduce Survey Measurement Error?” Public Opinion Quarterly 61, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 576–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
51. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. Cole, G. D. H. (1762; reprint, London, 1973)Google Scholar; Montesquieu, Charles, The Spirit of the Laws (Birmingham, Ala., 1984)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert A., Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, 1971)Google Scholar; Sorenson, Georg, Democracy and Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing World (Boulder, Colo., 1993)Google Scholar; Lane, Political Ideology, 84.
52. For a summary of those arguments, see Fleron, “Congruence Theory Applied,” 36. By contrast, Aleksandr Akheizer argues that mass Russian culture shows a self-destructively high tolerance for chaos; it is just Russian governments that prefer order. Akheizer, Aleksandr, “Dezorganizatsiia kak kategoriia obshchestvennoi nauki,” Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost', 1995, no.6:42–52.Google Scholar Also published in Sociological Research 35 (September-October 1996): 65-81.
53. Keenan, “Muscovite Political Folkways.“
54. Iurii Zarakhovich, “Viewpoint: A Russian's Lament,” Time, 21 September 1998, 76.
55. For instance, Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, 1989), 28–30.Google Scholar
56. Rose, “Postcommunism and the Problem of Trust“; Rose and Shin, “Democratization Backwards,” 17.
57. A word on quotations. All quotations are direct translations from the taped interviews. In translating, I attempted to recreate the original idea in conversational English, which, given the peculiarities of conversational Russian, meant changing word order and sometimes sentence structure as well. I did not attempt to capture every oral hesitation, and I have sometimes smoothed disjointed phrases into a more grammatical form. I also add words in the English translation where the precision of Russian grammar conveyed more meaning than did the exact English equivalent. Occasionally, I have turned partial responses into complete sentences, adding in enough of the question to make the response have meaning by itself. Transcripts of quotations in the original Russian can be obtained from the author.
58. By contrast, many respondents were more willing to see city dumas abolished, at least in smaller cities where it was not obvious that conflicting interests existed.
59. Hibbing, John R. and Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth, Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions (Cambridge, Eng., 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, “Democrats or Anti-Democrats? Americans’ Preferences for Governmental Processes” (paper, Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 1999).
60. Except in Voronezh, where the water supply is erratic, interviewees outside Moscow tended to have better things to say about their mayors than they did about El'tsin, but the contrast was not nearly as sharp as for Luzhkov.
61. Khoziain can mean master, manager, or host. When the respondents wanted to convey a more authoritarian relationship, they tended to use barin. This word was used regularly in reference to authorities in the abstract but not to refer to Luzhkov.
62. The person whose job is to keep sidewalks around buildings clean and clear of snow and otherwise manage public spaces.
63. Throughout the interviews, the respondents often talked about “order” as a condition where laws functioned normally and things worked. A more complete discussion of what Russians mean by “order” is the topic for another article. See also Reisinger, William M., “Survey Research and Authority Patterns in Contemporary Russia,” in Eckstein, , Fleron, , Hoffmann, , and Reisinger, , eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 163-73Google Scholar; Ries, Russian Talk, 72.
64. Barber, Benjamin, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, 1984).Google Scholar
65. Keane, John, Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments of European Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy, and the Problem of Controlling Social and Political Power (London, 1988).Google Scholar
66. Sabine, George H., “The Two Democratic Traditions,” Philosophical Review 61 no. 4 (October 1952): 451-74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
67. Keenan, “Muscovite Political Folkways.“
68. Walicki, Andrzej, A History of Russian Thought: From the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Andrews-Rusiecka, Hilda (Stanford, 1979).Google Scholar
69. Fleron, “Congruence Theory Applied, “36; Golenkova, Zinaida T., Vitiuk, Viktor V., Gridchin, Iurii V., Chernykh, Alia I., and Romanenko, Larisa M., “Stanovlenie grazhdanskogo obshchestva i sotsial'naia stratifikatsiia,” Sotsiobgicheskieissledovaniia, 1995, no. 6:14–24.Google Scholar Also published in Sociological Research 35 (March-April 1996): 6-22.
70. Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger, “Conceptions of Democracy.“
71. Hibbing, and Theiss-Morse, , “Democrats or Anti-Democrats?“; Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., and Kim, Jae-On, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven Nation Comparison (Cambridge, Eng., 1978), 46–62.Google Scholar
72. Miller, Hesli, Reisinger, “Conceptions of Democracy,” 195.
73. See similar views in Ashwin, Sarah, “'There's No Joy Any More': The Experience of Reform in aKuzbass Mining Settlement,” Europe-Asia Studies 47 (December 1995): 1376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 14
- Cited by