Ideology among Russian elites: attitudes toward the United States as a belief system

ABSTRACT

This article examines ideological constraint among Russian foreign policy elites, using all seven waves of the Survey of Russian Elites 1993–2016 to explore four questions: (1) Do attitudes expressed by members of the Russian foreign policy elite form a constrained belief system? (2) What is the content of Russian elite belief systems? (3) Do different groups within the foreign policy community differ with regard to their ideological attachments? (4) How have these belief systems changed over time? My statistical analysis reveals two structured belief systems within Russia’s elite: one focused on attitudes toward the US and another regarding economic and political institutions. Attitudes toward the US have vacillated over time, compressing in a more hostile direction in 2016. In analyzing these elites’ attitudes, variation over time proves more significant than variation between elite groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Belief system
• ideological constraint
• foreign policy

Acknowledgments

This article benefitted from constructive feedback received from participants at the “Russian Elite Attitudes toward Conflict and the West” workshop held at Hamilton College on 20–21 April 2018. The author is particularly grateful for the insightful critiques offered by Brian Taylor, Sharon Rivera, and John Grennan. Alexander Claycomb provided valuable research assistance.

Supplementary material

Supplemetal data for this article can been accessed here.

Notes

1. This pattern matrix uses an oblimin rotation, which allows for the two factors to be correlated. The factors are positively correlated with a coefficient of 0.39.

2. Shlapentokh and Bondartsova (2009) note that Stalin is a key figure in the imperial ideology of post-Soviet Russia, since no other past political leader symbolizes the success of the Soviet empire. This logic likely explains why this particular question correlated with other components of foreign policy beliefs.

3. See Appendix B for more details on the construction of the Foreign Policy and Domestic Policy indices.

4. The 2008 survey was conducted in March, April, and May, before the war with Georgia. Major military reforms were initiated in Russia in early 2009. With regard to other notable military events, the 1999 survey was conducted in November, after the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia; the US invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, one year before the 2004 survey; and the NATO-led coalition intervened militarily in Libya in March 2011, 18 months before the 2012 survey.

5. A correlation table of all 19 questions examined in the factor analysis model can be found in (online) Appendix A, Table A2.

6. Earlier models tested for these variables and found them to be insignificant and unhelpful to model fit. Additionally, while the elites surveyed ranged in age from 24 to 86 at the time of their interviews, preliminary models found age to be uncorrelated with other variables in the model and not statistically significant, so it is excluded here.

7. Individuals who identified with the Unity or Fatherland–All Russia movements that preceded the formation of United Russia were coded as “0.”