Editor's Introduction

Fear is the unifying theme of the articles that follow. Not the strakh about which Anatolii Rybakov wrote, but rather the fear for the future of stability, democracy, and social justice in Russia. But most of our authors conclude either on a hopeful note or with recommendations for action. In the first article ("The Electoral Map of Contemporary Russia"), Vladimir Kolosov and Rostislav Turovskii present the findings of their analysis of voting behavior in Russia's many regions. While not unlocking individual motivations at this level of analysis, they examine the commonplace assertion that the presidential election of June-July 1996 turned on the decline in people's living standards since the overthrow of Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Almost all press commentary has reported, or assumed, that the anti-Yeltsin vote reflected disillusion with a government that has increasingly impoverished most Russians. Conceding that "the political stratification of Russian regions into reformist and oppositional regions has intensified," the authors nevertheless find that poorer regions sometimes supported Yeltsin over the Communist candidate, Gennadii Ziuganov. Thus, for example, Yeltsin carried Ivanovo Oblast despite its having the highest unemployment rate in the country. They find no direct connection between quality of life and voting patterns in the elections. Political criteria, not economic determinism, offer the best explanation for why people voted the way they did.