ABSTRACT
The profundity of political and economic change experienced by the Soviet Union provided a natural laboratory for examining the role of legitimacy in the evolution of the socialist system. Legitimacy came to be based on the shared feeling that the government would provide a gradually improving standard of living, as well as increased economic and social security in exchange for civilian restraint from agitating for unattainable, rapid economic development or equality of civil and political rights. David Easton discussed legitimacy in terms of diffuse support for three different levels of political objects—the authorities, the regime and the political community. The early political culture literature contends that the evolution of mass-based democratic systems requires the emergence of certain supportive attitudes among the general public. A number of alternative and plausible economic, political and social explanations have been offered in the literature including: economic deprivation, perceived government ineffectiveness, perceived political inequities, nationality and ethnic conflicts, and a general distrust of people.
