ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the presence or absence in Russia of a political culture compatible with the emergence of democratic institutions. A number of analysts of Soviet politics dispute the view that there is more continuity than change in how Russians think about politics. One of the most thoughtful analysts of political culture in Communist systems—Archie Brown—sees both persistence and change in Soviet and Russian political culture. The questionnaire consisted of eighty items measuring respondents’ political attitudes, behavior, and knowledge. The dimension of political efficacy is intended to indicate the degree to which respondents feel they can have an impact on political decisions that affect their lives. Political trust is a dimension of political culture that measures people’s feelings about whether government and its officials can be trusted to perform well. The questions used in the analysis of Russian political culture presented so far were then combined to create new scaled variables, which were then correlated with education.
