Abstract
Before 1985, the lives of most ordinary Russians were at least predictable. Living standards were not high, the economy had stagnated and queues for basic goods were the rule, not the exception. However, prices of essentials were low and stable and there was a high degree of job security. The country faced important social problems — poverty, homelessness, alcoholism and the like — but the all-pervasive culture of secrecy meant that many Russians were simply unaware of the seriousness of the situation they faced.
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Notes
Václav Havel, ‘The Power of the Powerless’, in his Living In Truth (London: Faber, 1986), pp. 36–122.
I.E. Ladygina, ‘Mnenie naseleniya ob usloviyakh udovletvoreniya potrebnostei’, in V.G. Britvin, S.V. Kolobanov and E.G. Meshkova (eds), Obshchestvennoe mnenie v usloviyakh perestroiki: problemy formirovaniya i funktsionirovaniya (Moscow: Institut sotsiologii AN SSSR, 1990), pp. 81–93.
Alexei Levinson, ‘VTsIOM sprashivaet: kakaya nastroeniya?’, Izvestiya, 27 February 1993, p. 15.
Michael Ellman, ‘The Increase in Death and Disease under Katastroika’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 6, 1994, pp. 619–34.
N.Ya. Kirichenko and V.M. Konstantinov, ‘Pitanie naseleniya’, Obshchestvennoe mnenie v tsifrakh, 3 (1989). N = 1611.
M. Krasil’novka and T. Avdeenko, ‘Potrebitel’skoe povedenie naseleniya v krizisnykh situatsiyakh’, Voprosy ekonomiki, 1 (1992), pp. 74–82.
V. Rutgaiser, A. Grazhdankin, V. Kosmarskii, L. Khakhulina and S. Shpil’ko, ‘Otnoshenie naseleniya k ekonomicheskoi reforme’, Voprosy ekonomiki, 4 (1990). VTsIOM survey of the urban population of six republics, n = 1148.
J.S. Flemming and R.C.O. Matthews, ‘Economic Reform in Russia’, National Institute Economic Review, 3 (1994), pp. 65–82.
Richard Rose and Christian Haerpfer, ‘Adapting to Transformation in Eastern Europe’, University of Strathclyde Studies in Public Policy, 212 (1992), pp. 42–5 gives East European parallels.
Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Economics and Elections (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), chapter 8.
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© 1997 Matthew Wyman
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Wyman, M. (1997). The Mood of the Nation. In: Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373631_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373631_2
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