Editor's Introduction (1999)

The fragility of Russian society during the period of "transition" has led to the development of a mini-industry among researchers and policy makers in which people offer competing guesses as to what the future may hold. Obviously, this is of more than passing interest given the implications of Russian development, or lack thereof, for the rest of the world; the problem, though, is that it is not clear what we should be extrapolating from. Nor is it clear how the various sections of Russian society will influence the path to the future. Public opinion polling in Russia has become much more sophisticated in recent years, and the quality of the data is now quite high. In addition, we now have a good picture of the long-term trends in the opinions of different groups, and this provides a valuable basis upon which to build a more sophisticated and informed model of how the political and social forces will play themselves out. What we still lack, though, are carefully thought-out ways of analyzing the data. For this reason, the article by Leonid Gordon on "The Society of the 'Dissatisfied': Peculiarities of Mass Consciousness in the Transitional Period" is especially welcome. While aware of the limits of forecasting exercises, he has set out to distinguish between what is possible and what is unlikely, to try to identify the conditions under which conflict and spontaneous protest are more or less likely to occur. Starting from an analysis of the last decade or two of the Soviet period, he argues that it is the gap between expectations and reality that fuels discontent and pressures for change. The collapse of state power, the inability of central and local politicians to provide for the needs of the population, the appearance of great riches among much poverty, and greater knowledge of the outside world have all widened that gap and have increased the likelihood that pressures for change will grow. Noting that transition has brought many benefits as well as many costs, he points to the complexity of life that makes it impossible to make sweeping generalizations about what Russians will or will not be willing to put up with in the months and years ahead. Moreover, the "intensity of the new contradictions and burdens is compounded because people are not accustomed to them and in most cases, quite understandably, lack the abilities and skills that would allow them to take advantage of the new opportunities and alleviate the associated stress." While people have not forgotten the shortcomings of Soviet society, he argues, "in a broad sense, the strangeness and untraditional quality of the problems of the transitional period accentuates people's negative attitude toward almost all change." Whether the outcome will be continuing support for a market economy and democracy, for a return to the authoritarian past, or for something else, Gordon suggests, will depend on the balance between two sets of factors: first, between what he calls "patient" or "passive" dissatisfaction, and "impatient" or "active" dissatisfaction; and second, between the degree of support for the goal of building a democracy and a market economy and the degree of support for antimarket and antidemocratic goals. Seen in this way, social unrest can be either positive or negative with regard to economic and political reform, and hence for the future shape of Russian society. Utilizing trend data from public opinion research, he attempts to identify the groups that are most likely to affect these balances and considers the implications of this for change. As readers will see, this is one of the most clear-eyed, uncomplicated, and accessible analyses to have been written in recent years, and it provides an excellent starting point for future work.