This paper explores the identity and the social/political behaviour of Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia through a comparison with the Baltic countries via a "hot and cold ethnicity" paradigm. Central Asian Russians are more likely, ceteris paribus, to be found at the "cold" end of the spectrum of "ethnic…

Attention to virtual space is growing in Russia. Russian politicians have an interest in the Internet: the president has his own blog and reads Twitter, and the United Russia Party is starting to work with the iPad on a mass scale. Opposition leaders and movements are not lagging behind either. Online surveys of various Internet resources are…

Two years and seven months after the initiation of the U.S. satellite program, Soviet Russia launched a rocket north of the Caspian Sea carrying the now famous "Sputnik I" satellite. U.S. scientists were aware that Soviet Russia was planning on putting an artificial satellite into orbit; however, secrecy surrounding the timing and the…

In October to December 2008, the Laboratory for Political Research at the Higher School of Economics State University, as part of a broad project devoted to determining the degree of homogeneity versus heterogeneity of the political consciousness of today's Russian society, carried out a sociological survey on the topic "The Political…

Over the span of all of the years that the Levada Center has been in operation, one of the tasks of the research collective has been to analyze the behavior of "advanced" groups whose characteristic way of life, attitudes, and assessments might have the significance, to other strata of the society, of a model, and provide them with an…

The hope that young people would accept and quickly learn Western ideas and democratic principles rather than just economic and technological achievements occupied a key place in the conceptions of the liberal and democratic parties in Russia. The possibilities of the modernization of Russian society and its economy were associated directly with…

The book is entitled History Wars in the Classroom: Global Perspectives and examines how ten separate countries have experienced debates and disputes over the contested nature of the subject, for example the "Black Armband" and "Whitewash" factions in Australia who adopt opposingly celebratory or denigratory views of Australian…

Among 2,321 Russian adults surveyed, about half supported market institutions and about a third supported state-based economic institutions. Higher educational level was associated with proreform attitudes. Economic ideology strongly affected voting behavior, party choice, income, Communist party membership, and prodemocracy views, and also…

Asserts that during periods of rapid social change, the political consciousness of the population also changes dramatically. Reports on a survey of 1,800 students and 1,270 instructors in Russian higher education institutions. Finds that changes in social consciousness are not proceeding along lines of rational interpretation of facts and ideas.…

Profiles current Russian research on political culture and values. Reports on a study of the spread of materialist and postmaterialist values among nearly 6,000 Russians between 1984 and 1993. Discusses the social and demographic variables that exert the greatest influence on the spread of values. (CFR)