Monitoring Institutional Change in the Soviet Union: Comparing Legislator and Citizen Perspectives

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Understanding the dramatic political, social and economic changes currently underway in the Soviet Union and through out Eastern Europe is one of the most important challenges facing the social sciences. This award renews support for research designed to monitor public opinion in the Soviet Union and to study relations between public opinion and political leaders as the Soviet Union struggles with the process of democratization. Specifically this project builds on an 1990 survey of Soviet citizens by conducting a second set of interviews with Soviet citizens in three republics: the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Lithuania. The interviews will measure the extent of public support or opposition to the institutional changes. They also will permit assessments of the nature and extent of ethnic and regional divisions and other potential stumbling blocks to the establishment of democratic processes. In addition, interviews with members of the Supreme Soviet in each of the three Republics and the elected representatives to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies will provide the first systematic evidence of the leadership's personal preferences and their perceptions of citizen needs and demands. When completed this project will provide systematic evidence of the relations developing between Soviet citizens and their representatives. This evidence will be invaluable in understanding the global processes by which centralized, authoritarian states evolve toward more decentralized, open, and democratic governments.