"Centers" and "Peripheries": The Political Systems of the Three East Slavic Republics

Abstract

The political preferences and political behavior of inhabitants of the three East Slavic capitals—Moscow, Minsk, and Kiev—have much in common. Voting in these three cities is quite different from the average for their countries as a whole, leaning toward greater anti-Communism and greater attachment to the ideas of the market and democracy. This is quite natural. The "anti-Communist revolution" that destroyed the USSR was carried out mainly by those at the top, the social "elite" formed within Soviet society. This elite destroyed the society that had been restricting its aspirations toward property, freedom (of course, for itself above all), respectability, and legitimacy—which, as Communist ideology disintegrated, could result only in the conversion of nomenklatura status into the universally recognized and "convertible" status positions of a society of the Western type.