ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the data collected by the National Center for Public Opinion Research, which has been tracking political developments in the former Soviet Union since the early years of perestroika. Reasons for the persistence of the old attitudes should be sought in the Russian political tradition, in the nation's civic culture, which was retained and amplified by the Soviet regime. By contrast, civil society is possible only when interest groups and autonomous civic structures are allowed to flourish and individual interests have a chance to be articulated and communicated to others. Soviet society produced not so much political leaders as party bosses whose legitimacy derived from their allegiance to the party cause and personal connections to the higher strata of power. The Soviet Union has always been a "mobilized society", that is, a society based on political activism organized from above and controlled by the hierarchy of state power.
