Putting Up With Fellow Russians: An Analysis of Political Tolerance in the Fledgling Russian Democracy
| Date | 01 March 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591299805100102 |
| Published date | 01 March 1998 |
| Author | James L. Gibson |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
37
Putting
Up
With
Fellow
Russians:
An
Analysis
of
Political
Tolerance
in
the
Fledgling
Russian
Democracy
JAMES
L.
GIBSON,
UNIVERSITY
OF
HOUSTON
Research
from
the
early
days
of
Russian
democratization
has
suggested
that
political
tolerance
among
the
mass
public
was
in
terribly
short
sup-
ply
Several
questions
remain,
however.
Has
intolerance
persisted
since
the
late
1980s
and
early
1990s?
Further,
how
intolerant
are
the
Russians
when
compared
with
the
mass
publics
of
other
Central
and
Eastern
Eu-
ropean
democratizing
countries;
how
intolerant
are
the
Russians
when
compared
with
Western
Europeans
and
Americans?
Most
importantly,
is
Russian
intolerance
likely
to
become
pernicious?
That
is,
does
it
have
the
attributes
that
make
it
likely
to
result
in
political
repression?
I
answer
these
questions
by
theoretically
specifying
and
investigating
empirically
four
attributes
of
Russian
public
opinion
that
presage
whether
political
consequences
are
likely
to
flow
from
political
intolerance.
My
overriding
conclusion
is
that
Russian
intolerance
has
several
traits
that
may
indeed
make
it
pernicious,
especially
for
unpopular
political
minorities.
One
of
the
most
vexing
problems
of
attempted
democratic
transforma-
tions
is
the
problem
of
political
intolerance-the
unwillingness
of
citizens
and
leaders
to
allow
all
political
interests
to
compete
openly
for
political
power.
This
is
perhaps
not
particularly
surprising
since,
in
the
early
days
of
political
NOTE:
This
is
a
revised
version
of
a
paper
delivered
at
the
Conference
on
&dquo;Civic
Culture
in
Post-Communist
Societies,&dquo;
Centre
for
European
Studies,
Nuffield
College,
Oxford
University,
Oxford,
England,
8-9
March
1996,
and
the
1996
Annual
Meet-
ing
of
the
Midwest
Political
Science
Association,
April
18-20, 1996,
Palmer
House
Hilton,
Chicago,
Illinois.
The
study
uses
data
from
a
collaborative
project
that
grew
out
of
the
Law
and
Society
Association’s
&dquo;Working
Group
on
Orientations
toward
Law
and
Normative
Ordering.&dquo;
Ellen
S.
Cohn, James
L.
Gibson,
Susan
O.
38
transformations,
the
contestants
for
power
are
likely
to
believe
they
are
fight-
ing
life
or
death
political
battles,
centered
around
a
struggle
between
&dquo;good&dquo;
and
&dquo;evil.&dquo;
For
bitter
enemies
to
learn
how
to
compete
peacefully
and
demo-
cratically
for
political
power
is
one
of
the
most
formidable
problems
for
the
consolidation
of
democratic
transformations.
Political
intolerance
is
an
especially
grave
problem
in
the
Russian
case
since
there
are
so
few
cultural
norms
that
cultivate
tolerance.
A
key
defining
aspect
of
Russian
political
culture
is
often
said
to
be
its
intolerance,
and
cer-
tainly
there
is
little
in
the
Marxist-Leninism
of
the
old
Soviet
regime
that
en-
couraged
tolerance
of
one’s
most
hated
political
enemies.
In
part,
this
may
be
a
function
of
the
absence
of
liberalism
in
Russian
political
traditions,
but
what-
ever
the
cause,
initial
empirical
research
convincingly
demonstrates
that
tol-
erance
is
in
terribly
short
supply
in
Russia,
at
least
during
the
early
days
of
the
Russian
transformation
(e.g.,
Gibson,
Duch,
and
Tedin
1992;
Gibson
and
Duch
1993b).
A
paramount
hurdle
to
the
consolidation
of
Russian
democracy
is
the
political
intolerance
that
seems
to
be
so
widespread
in
Russian
political
culture.
Much
of
what
is
known
about
Russian
intolerance
derives
from
surveys
of
mass
opinion
conducted
during
the
period
of
democratic
initiation.’
Intol-
White,
Joseph
Sanders,
Joan
McCord,
and
Felice
Levine
were
responsible
for
the
development
and
implementation
of the
research
design.
Funding
for
the
project
.
was
provided
by
the
(U.S.)
National
Science
Foundations
(SES
92
13237
and
SBR
93 11403)
and
the
National
Council
for
Soviet
and
East
European
Research
(#810-
07).
Our
European
collaborators
include
Chantal
Kourilsky-Augeven
(France),
Grazyna
Skapska,
Iwona Jakubowska-Branicka,
and
Maria
Borucka-Arctowa
(Po-
.
land),
Andras
Sajo
(Hungary),
Rosemary
Barbaret
(Spain),
and
Stefka
Naoumova
(Bulgaria).
Gennady
Denisovsky,
Polina
Kozyreva,
and
Mikhail
Matskovsky
of
the
Institute
of
Sociology,
Russian
Academy
of
Sciences,
were
instrumental
in
con-
ducting
the
Russian
portion
of the
research.
Another
portion
of
the
article
relies
on
data
collected
with
support
from
the
National
Science
Foundation
(SES-
9023565),
the
Advanced
Research
Program
(003652-164),
the
College
of
Social
Sciences
and
the
Limited-Grant-in-Aid
program
at
the
University
of
Houston,
and
the
USSR
Academy
of
Sciences.
Without
my
collaboration
with
Gennady
Denisovsky,
Polina
Kozyreva,
and
Mikhail
Matskovsky
of the
Institute
of
Sociol-
ogy,
USSR
Academy
of
Sciences,
this
research
would
not
have
been
possible.
Raymond
M.
Duch,
University
of
Houston,
has
been
my
invaluable
collaborator
on
this
earlier
project.
Pam
Moore,
Kris
Guffey,
Marika
Litras, Julie
Nadeau, John
Kraft,
Kimberly
Smirles
provided
valuable
research
assistance.
Archie
Brown
and
Raymond
Duch made
useful
comments
on
an
earlier
version.
I
assume
complete
responsibility
for
all
interpretations
and
conclusions
in
this
article;
none
of
these
colleagues
or
agencies
necessarily
endorses
my
findings.
1
It
is
of
course
difficult
to
specify
exactly
when
the
democratic
transformation
was
initi-
ated in
Russia,
and
when
the
process
of
consolidation
began.
However,
most
would
39
erance
was
at
that
time
widespread
(e.g.,
Gibson
and
Duch
1993a;
Bahry,
Boaz,
and
Gordon
1996).
But
perhaps
that
was
to
be
expected
during
the
early
days
of
the
transition.
Perhaps
now
that
the
Russians
have
a
few
years
of
experience
with
relatively
democratic
politics,
intolerance
has
abated
some-
what.
To
some
degree,
the
intensity
of
political
conflict
within
Russian
poli-
tics
has
subsided;
perhaps
the
Russian
public
has
grown
accustomed
to
witnessing
political
competition
among
groups
arrayed
from
the
very
far
&dquo;right&dquo;
to
the
very
far
&dquo;left&dquo;
(to
the
extent
that
terms
such
as
&dquo;left&dquo;
and
&dquo;right&dquo;
mean
anything
any
more).
Thus,
the
overriding
objective
of
this
article
is
to
reexam-
ine
the
intolerance
of
the
Russian
mass
public,
focusing
on
the
period
of
the
attempted
consolidation
of
democracy
in
Russia.
The
most
important
theoretical
question
I
seek
to
address
in
this
article
is
whether
political
intolerance
actually
matters
for
the
real
politics
of
Russia.
That
is,
is
intolerance,
so
commonly
treated
as
a
dependent
variable,
of
any
importance
as
an
independent
variable?
It
is
clear
from
some
of
the
earlier
research
on
political
intolerance
that
intolerant
attitudes
do
not
always
mate-
rialize
in
intolerant
behavior
(e.g.,
Gibson
and
Bingham
1985;
ch.
7;
Marcus
et
al.
1995);
and
that
even
intolerant
behavior
does
not
necessarily
generate
repressive
public
policy
(e.g.,
Gibson
1988, 1989a).
Are
there
any
consequences
that
flow
from
the
attitudinal
intolerance
of
the
Russian
mass
public?
Since
this
is
not
a
case
study
of
an
actual
instance
of
political
repression,
I
will
perforce
investigate
this
problem
indirectly,
focusing
in
particular
on
the
at-
tributes
of
those
who
are
intolerant
in
order
to
draw
inferences
about
the
likely
political
consequences
of
intolerance.
Ultimately,
then,
the
overriding
purpose
of
this
article
is
to
try
to
assess
the
repercussions
of
mass
political
intolerance
for
the
possibilities
for
consolidating
democracy
in
Russia.
A
final
objective
of
this
article
is
to
try
to
place
these
Russian
findings
in
comparative
perspective.
After
all,
a
stock
finding
of
tolerance
research
is
that
even
quite
democratic
regimes
are
characterized
by
high
levels
of
political
intolerance
(e.g.,
Duch
and
Gibson
1992).
Since
the
survey
data
on
which
this
article
is
based
are
part
of
a
larger,
multi-nation
project,
I
will
report
comparative
findings
allowing
the
assessment
of
whether
Russian
intolerance
agree
that
a
terribly
important
milepost
in
the
early
days
of
the
political
transformation
was
the
end
of
the
monopoly
of the
Communist
party
on
political
and
administrative
authority
which
dated
from
early
1990
(although
some
also
point
to
the
party
confer-
ence
of
1988
as
a
key
milepost).
The
attack
on
Russian
White
House
in
the
Fall
of
1993,
and
the
subsequent
Parliamentary
elections,
most
likely
signaled
the
beginning
of
a
period
of
consolidation.
Of
course,
there
is
a
certain
amount
of
arbitrariness
to
defining
1990-1993
as
the
period
of
democratic
initiation,
but
at
least
some
other
ob-
servers
agree
with
this
designation
(
e.g.,
Rigby
1995).
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