Russians and Poles in the Grips of Societal Change

Compares the reaction of the populations of Russia & Poland towards the changes that took place in these countries after the collapse of the communist system. The study was conducted in 1998 & 2002 among 1600 randomly selected Russian & 1100 Polish people. It was discovered that there were a lot of similarities between two countries. For example, the same class of people (well-educated & well-off urban residents) gained the most as a result of societal transformation. The main difference is in the way people identify themselves. In Russia people identify themselves with a strong state: more than 50% of the population considers themselves as the citizens of the Soviet Union, the state that does not exist. In Poland, which became the EU member, the self-identification lies in cultural sphere. Contrary to situation in Poland, in Russia, the most politically active force are the people who do not support the democratic reforms & lament the collapse of the Soviet Union, which testifies to the fact that Poland has a more mature civil society. Russian respondents are less politicized, because they intimately do not believe in their ability to initiate political change, which makes the democracy in Russia much less stable. D. Shembel