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ABSTRACT
This paper applies the model of opinion formation developed by John Zaller to the study of anti-American attitudes in the Russian elite. It examines the relative weight of political predispositions (interests, values, and experiences) versus immediately accessible “considerations” that depend on the flow of information in elite discourse. Based on survey data from 1995–2016, we find that two key political predispositions (identification as a Westernizer or Slavophile and service in the military and security agencies) are highly significant in the Yel’tsin period, when debates about Western intentions toward Russia were robust and the Kremlin’s messaging was diverse. By contrast, anti-American sentiment in the elite has become more uniform in the Putin era, which we attribute to an increasingly fervent anti-American narrative on state-controlled television. In a period of clear and unequivocal messaging emanating from Kremlin-controlled media, these signals have surpassed civilizational identity and service in the force structures in importance.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the participants in the NSF-sponsored “Russian Elite Attitudes toward Conflict and the West” workshop held at Hamilton College on 20–21 April 2018 for their helpful suggestions. We are particularly grateful to Timothy Frye, Philip Klinkner, Eduard Ponarin, David Rivera, Rachel Sullivan Robinson, Brian Taylor, and William Zimmerman for their feedback and advice.
Data availability
The Survey of Russian Elites database is archived at the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03724.v6.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
Notes
1. The percentage was even lower in 1993, with 26.0% of elites in agreement. Despite differences in question wording, negative views of the US expressed by the Russian mass public exhibited the same spike following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. When asked to choose the five countries most unfriendly and hostile to Russia, the percentage naming the US rose from 38% in 2013 to 69%, 73%, and 72% in 2014, 2015, and 2016, respectively (Levada-Tsentr Citation2016). For more, see also Smeltz, Wojtowicz, and Goncharov (Citation2018, 2–3) and Lipman, Kachkaeva, and Poyker (Citation2018, Figure 7.2). For an opposing view – that there were only modest shifts in mass attitudes toward the West between May 2013 and November 2014, in part “because Russian nationalism was already strong before the crisis in Ukraine emerged” – see Alexseev and Hale (Citation2015, 1–3).
2. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale is 0.47. See Rivera et al. (Citation2016, 8–12) for a fuller discussion of the two survey questions.
3. Question wording for standard demographic control variables: ● Male: [interviewer records] “Mark gender of respondent without asking,” with the key being 1. Male and 2. Female. Responses of male are coded as one; all others are coded as zero. ● Born in 1960 or Later: “Could you please tell me in what year you were born?” Responses of 1960 or later are coded as one; all other years are coded as zero. ● Non-Russian: “What nationality do you consider yourself?” All responses except Russian are coded as one; all others are coded as zero.
4. Question wording: [interviewer records] “To which elite group does the individual belong?,” with the key being (for 2008–2016) 1. Media, 2. Science/Education, 3. Private Business, 4. State-Owned Enterprises, 5. Executive Branch/Ministries, 6. Legislative Branch (those involved with foreign policy issues), and 9. Military/Security Agencies. Responses of 4, 5, and 6 are coded as one; all others are coded as zero.
5. The surveys were conducted in December 1992–January 1993, October–November 1995, November 1999, March–April 2004, March–May 2008, July–August 2012, and February–March 2016.
6. For an elaboration of how these concepts can be investigated using survey research, see Henry Hale’s exploration (Citation2019) of what identifying Russia as a European civilization means, as well as Rivera (Citation2004, Citation2016a). See also the discussion by Vladimir Shlapentokh (Citation2001, 18), who contends that “among those Russians who ‘reject’ the Western model, many of them simply do not believe that it is possible to implement it in the Russian context. In this case, it is not a matter of personal disapproval, but of practical consideration.”
7. Question wording: “Some people think that Russia should follow the path of developed countries and assimilate the experience and achievements of Western civilization. Other people, taking into account the history and geographic position of Russia at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, think that it should follow a unique Russian path. Which of these statements is closer to your point of view?,” with the key being 1. Russia should follow the path of developed countries and assimilate the experience and achievements of Western civilization, and 2. Taking into account the history and geographic position of Russia at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it should follow a unique Russian path. (Between 1995 and 2008, the first part of the question included additional language, which is italicized below: “Some people think that Russia should follow the path of developed countries, integrate into the world community, and assimilate the experience and achievements of Western civilization.”)
8. A separate survey commissioned by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in 2001 of 210 foreign policy experts—including some with the same profile as ours, such as Duma deputies with committee assignments related to foreign affairs—showed exactly the same percentage of Westernizers (40%) as our 1999 data (but with a lower percentage of Slavophiles and higher percentage of “don’t know” answers). An analogous survey conducted five years earlier registered nearly identical percentages of Slavophiles and Westernizers (52% and 41%, respectively) as did our 1995 survey. See Rossiiskii nezavisimyi institut sotsial’nykh i national’nykh problem (Citation2001, Table 2) and SINUS Moskva and VTsIOM (Citation1996, Figure 3), respectively.
9. For a discussion of Russia’s perspective on some of these issues, see Lukyanov (Citation2016).
10. Various definitions of this Russian term converge on the same underlying idea – that siloviki are, in the words of Kryshtanovskaya and White (Citation2003, 289), “people in uniform.” Taylor (Citation2007, vii) defines both the power ministries and their employees as “those state agencies in which the personnel generally wear uniforms and in which some people carry guns. More precisely, these bodies are military, security, or law enforcement bodies that possess armed units or formations. People with power ministry backgrounds are referred to as siloviki.” For more on defining and identifying siloviki, see also Rivera and Rivera (Citation2014).
11. For a review of the scholarly literature on the silovik worldview, see Rivera and Rivera (Citation2018, 225–228).
12. The third scenario (NATO intervention in ethnic conflicts in Europe) was not included in the 1995 survey.
13. Question wording: see note 4. Responses of 9 are coded as one; all others are coded as zero.
14. Data limitations prevent us from creating a true “silovik” variable, which would identify those with prior employment in the military and security forces. For more on how to construct such a variable using the 2016 data, see Rivera (Citation2016b).
15. Question wording: “People find out about events in the world and in their country from various sources: radio, television, newspapers, the Internet. In regard to the past week, how often did you learn about events in the world and in Russia from each of the following sources?,” with the key being (for 2008 and 2012) 1. Once or not once, 2. Several times, and 3. Every day or almost every day, and (for 1995, 1999, 2004, and 2016) 1. Not once, 2. Once, 3. Several times, 4. Almost every day, and 5. Every day.
16. In 2012, the options for listening to foreign radio broadcasts and domestic radio broadcasts were merged into one variable, “radio broadcasts.” To maintain as much consistency as possible, a value of one on the State-Run Media variable for that year is assigned to respondents who watched television every day or almost every day and did not listen to “radio broadcasts” every day or almost every day. In 2016, the survey question used for evaluating media consumption was much more fine-grained, asking how frequently respondents learned about world events from: First Channel, “Rossiya” Channel, NTV, REN-TV, satellite television, channels in your region or city, radio broadcasts, print journalism (newspapers, magazines), online media, social networking sites, other online sources, foreign news sources (television programs, radio, newspapers and magazines), closed or specialized sources of information (e.g. internal organization reports), personal communication with colleagues, and personal communication with friends and relatives. Respondents were assigned a value of one if they reported getting their news from any of the three national television channels (i.e. First Channel, “Rossiya” Channel, or NTV) every day or almost every day and did not report learning from “foreign news sources” every day or almost every day.
17. The merging of the “radio broadcasts” variable in the 2012 survey as described in the previous footnote was likely responsible for some of the decline in the percentage of respondents who were coded as one on the State-Run Media variable between 2008 and 2012, since the coding for 2012 excludes those who did not regularly tune in to either domestic or foreign radio stations (instead of just foreign radio stations). Specifically, 12% of respondents in 2008 watched state-run television, but were coded as zero because they listened to foreign radio broadcasts. In 2012, 33% of respondents watched state-run television, but were coded as zero because they listened to (domestic or foreign) “radio broadcasts.” This change in methodology, however, is not entirely responsible for the decline between 2008 and 2012 in the percentage coded as one for State-Run Media, since the percentage of respondents who watched state-run television, regardless of their radio listening habits, declined from 82% in 2008 to 60% in 2012.
18. Despite civilizational identity being the only statistically significant variable across all waves of the survey, when it is removed from the regression the average marginal effects of the other independent variables remain largely unchanged. The decrease in the size of the marginal effect of the Active Military variable over time remains the same, as do the substantive and statistical significance of the effects of the State-Run Media and Kremlin-Dependent variables in 2008 and 2016, respectively. See Table B1 in the online appendix for complete results.
19. Indeed, the average marginal effect of the Kremlin-Dependent variable is high (17%) in November 1999, after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of that year.
20. Of course, it is possible that respondents who are more hostile to the US may seek out state-run media sources for their news. See the way in which Olesya Tkacheva (Citation2019) addresses this problem in her study of the impact of online media consumption on the anti-American attitudes of Russian elites.
21. On Russia’s media during the 2011–2012 electoral cycle, see Zimmerman (Citation2014, 278-280) and Hale (Citation2011, 3–4).
22. See also MacFarlane (Citation1994, 264–265), Shlapentokh (Citation1998), Ponarin (Citation2013, 2–3), and the special 2014 double issue of Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (3–4) entitled “Status and Emotions in Russian Foreign Policy.” Of particular interest in the latter are the introduction by Forsberg, Heller, and Wolf (Citation2014) and the discussion of ressentiment by Malinova (Citation2014).