It's the Stability, Stupid! How the Quest to Restore Order After the Soviet Collapse Shaped Russian Popular Opinion

This article argues that despite the chaos and uncertainty of the post-Soviet period, Russian political outlooks were highly coherent because they were driven by a near consensual desire to achieve greater stability. Based on over-time and cross-section dimensional analyses of a unique dataset of 418 surveys, covering the 1993–2011 period, I show that the popular obsession with restoring order facilitated the consolidation of authoritarianism in Russia. In particular, stability-centric outlooks structured political competition in ways that favored strong-armed incumbent behavior and fostered divisions and extremism among the opposition. These dynamics allowed Russia's increasingly authoritarian regime to rule with minimal use of coercion and largely through the ballot box.