William Pyle

wpyle@middlebury.edu
Articles by William Pyle

Russians’ “Impressionable Years”

I argue that Russians’ worldview in the Putin era derives, at least in part, from the lived experience of the years just before and after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The late 1980s and early 1990s ushered in massive changes in the rules governing social organization and, for many Russians, life took a dramatic turn for the worse. That their circumstances during those extraordinary times shaped enduring beliefs as to the building blocks of a good society appears to be reflected in the survey data discussed here and is consistent with research on the lasting effects of economic hardships in other contexts.

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