Editor's Introduction

Abstract

Among the revolutionary transformations that Russians have been undergoing is a process of resocialization involving the entire populace. Whatever the degree of acceptance of new values or retention of old ones, few Russians have been able to escape the need to reexamine fundamental assumptions and convictions. Elena B. Shestopal ("The Prospects of Democracy in Russians' Minds") reports on a qualitative study of Russian attitudes toward democracy in this issue's first article. Tucked in among her general conclusions are occasional tidbits of particular interest. For instance, the cohort of persons between thirty-five and forty-five years of age at the time of the study, which ended two years ago, look back upon the 1950s much as many Americans do: as a golden age—presumably more golden after March 1953 than before, but her report does not say. Her most significant conclusion is that authoritarian personalities do not predominate in Russian society; even the allegedly retrograde generation now aged from sixty-five to eighty-five is not characterized by a totalitarian psyche. Respect for the dignity of the individual has grown in all segments of society. You do not have to be a now much-reviled "democrat" to have respect for several of the values associated with democracy. Russians today act in the spirit of the anti-Communist slogan of 1921: "Soviets without Communists!" Now, it is "Democracy without Democrats!" Shestopal concludes that democratic tendencies can, indeed, triumph in the Russian political system. She believes, however, that the form of democracy, if it is to thrive in Russian conditions, will have to be not classically liberal and laissez-faire but rather socialist and statist.