Modernization and Traditionality in a Multiethnic Society: The Soviet Case

Exposure to modernizing institutions such as the school, factory, and city has been found to be associated with the breakdown in traditional values, beliefs, and behaviors in a wide variety of cultural settings. Socioeconomic change has had a similar impact on the late-modernizing Islamic minorities in the USSR. Although patriarchal attitudes and behaviors have persisted in some areas of family life, extensive shifts in family values and approved gender roles have occurred, particularly in the last two decades. These trends parallel those found in nonsocialist settings.