what changes to civil liberties have occurred in russia since putin came to power?

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J Hum Rights. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 Aug nine.

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Public opinion on human rights in Putin-era Russia: Continuities, changes, and sources of variation

Abstract

Major setbacks in the protection of human rights during the Putin regime have produced little public outcry, suggesting that there is scant support for human rights in Russian public opinion. However, analysis of survey data spanning 2001–2015 yields several surprising conclusions. In contrast to findings from earlier studies, the data indicate that Russians think of rights in ii distinct dimensions: material rights (including economic rights and rights of personal integrity) and (conventionally understood) ceremonious liberties. Support for the former has been potent throughout the Putin era, and back up for the latter has grown steadily and consistently. Moreover, support for civil liberties has increased most among less-educated and younger Russians who do non reside in Moscow and Leningrad: Contrary to theoretical expectations, variation in support has become less systematically linked to standard socioeconomic and demographic variables. Russians are divided over whether political NGOs should be allowed to receive foreign funding, a major issue for man rights advocates given the Russian government'due south crackdown on such funding and on human rights NGOs.

For scholars and activists who work on homo rights bug, large-sample surveys are a potentially valuable source of data nearly how particular societies view human being rights. From a practical perspective, surveys can help inform domestic and international activists about which issues and groups to target in campaigns designed to pressure a authorities to comply with human rights norms (Mendelson and Gerber 2007; Mendelson 2015a, 2015b). From a more than theoretical perspective, detailed survey data tin illuminate the level of need for homo rights protection in a state, which in plow shapes the predictive power there of popular analytical models whereby domestic and transnational human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) influence governments (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse and Sikkink 1999). These models typically assume a domestic normative context that places a high value on the protection of rights, when in fact the level of public need for human rights in a given social club is an open empirical question. Moreover, contempo survey work on human being rights perceptions has challenged conventional wisdom well-nigh prevailing attitudes (Ron and Crow 2015; Ron, Pandya, and Crow 2016).

This article makes a case for expanding survey research on public views of human rights in three directions: attending to change over fourth dimension, analyzing sources of inside-country variation, and specifically because public views of government tactics that are function of a backfire against human being rights NGOs. It illustrates the benefits of these three steps through a study of trends in public support for unlike types of homo rights, variations in such support past demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, and views of recent regime policies to limit foreign funding of domestic NGOs in Russian federation.

These analyses, which draw on Russian surveys conducted from 2001 to 2015, yield counterintuitive findings. Russians tend to think of rights of personal-integrity and economic rights (often treated every bit analytically singled-out) in the same terms, while they think of civil liberties as a unlike dimension of rights. Back up for the former, here labeled "material" rights, has been consistently loftier in Russian federation, while back up for ceremonious liberties has grown steadily since the early 2000s. Although markers of eye-form condition such as education, income, and urban residence have been associated with greater support for ceremonious liberties, the increase in support over time has been more than pronounced among lower class groups and the "class" gap in back up has narrowed. Finally, Russian society is quite divided over the desirability of restrictions on strange funding of political NGOs, with support for such restrictions highest amid the university educated. These findings are surprising in light of the steady rollback of human rights and civil liberties by the Russian regime since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, the recent surge in Putin's popularity despite accelerating assaults on human rights since early 2014, and conventional portrayals of Russian political culture and ceremonious society. The survey results thus provide a novel empirical perspective virtually public views of human rights in Russia, with broader implications for our understanding of recent developments in that land. They point to the value of surveys of perceptions of human rights, particularly long-term and detailed surveys, for capturing aspects of public opinion about human rights that are hard to measure otherwise.

Theoretical context

Quantitative studies take a rich tradition in the scholarly literature on human rights (due east.g., Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). But this work has emphasized cross-national designs, leaving country-specific case studies to qualitative researchers (see Hafner-Burton and Ron 2009). Some research employs data from comparative surveys like the Earth Values Survey to measure cantankerous-national variation in support for man rights, showing, for example, that the work of NGOs is critical in bringing human rights violations to the attention of publics (Davis, Murdie, and Steinmetz 2012). However, reliance on ane standardized question (or a pocket-sized number of them) to narrate perceptions of homo rights in a given country is problematic due to the likely cross-national variation in the cultural and political meanings assigned to terms like "man rights" (Landman 2004).

I perennial theoretical concern for social scientists has been the part of domestic and international activists in compelling governments to comply with international human rights norms. Human rights activism often focuses on monitoring and reporting abuses in order to "shame and blame" governments to protect man rights (Murdie and Davis 2012; Davis et al. 2012). Co-ordinate to the influential "boomerang" (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and "spiral" (Risse and Ropp 1999) models, these activities produce both domestic protests and international outcry, which in turn pressure governments to limit man rights abuses. Nonetheless, revealing human rights violations is only likely to spark the type of public objections that motivate an authoritarian government to protect rights if the public in question not only supports human rights but too values them above other priorities (such every bit order, national security, or economic growth) that governments often cite as justifications for committing or tolerating rights abuses. Accordingly, domestic public need for human being rights is an often unspoken yet possibly decisive cistron that may influence whether international and domestic organizations tin effectively pressure reluctant governments to observe human rights (Cardenas 2007; Hafner-Burton and Ron 2009). Domestic public demand for human rights may besides be an omitted variable in quantitative models showing that the effectiveness of international human rights organizations in mobilizing protests depends on how well their activities address the concerns of the local population (eastward.one thousand., Murdie and Bhasin 2011): Such an orientation on the part of the international activists may be endogenous to the level of demand for homo rights in the local population, which could be the underlying crusade of human rights protests.

These considerations place a premium on measuring the level of need for human being rights in a given gild in order to assess the probable bear on of human rights activism. The all-time way to do so is using detailed surveys of the population's views of human being rights. Such surveys provide replicable, methodologically reliable information that, in principle, are less influenced than qualitative studies by prior assumptions based on anecdotes or the potentially idiosyncratic and tendentious views of activists, politicians, local experts, and other interested parties that often provide qualitative data. As Ron and Crow (2015) evidence using homo rights perceptions surveys they conducted in Mexico, Columbia, Morocco, and India, surveys can produce results that defy the understandings of activists, scholars, and other observers. Moreover, public views toward human rights are not necessarily static: Indeed, the assumption underlying efforts to promote public support for human being rights norms assumes that public opinions regarding human being rights are malleable and dynamic. Repeating the same survey questions over time is a powerful way to appraise how views evolve in a society and, thus, whether such programs are successful. Survey data can also potentially yield insight into which particular groups in a club are more (and less) supportive of human rights, thus providing a sense of the relative forcefulness of the proand antirights constituencies, a crucial factor for the prospects of international interventions (Cardenas 2007). Finally, surveys can illuminate how publics experience toward specific tactics in the expanding arsenal that regimes use to scroll back human rights and pressure. One such tactic—the restriction of foreign funding to domestic human rights NGOs—has become increasingly mutual (Christensen and Weinstein 2013; Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2016), all the same nosotros know little nigh whether societies take the arguments of governments justifying such measures.

Thus, to maximize the potential payoff, a survey approach ideally uses multiple waves of studies using the same questions, provides the basis for detailed multivariate analyses of the factors influencing pro- and anti-rights perspectives and includes questions virtually specific tactics used by governments to impede prorights activism. These features are all obtained in the survey data from Russia analyzed below. Russia is, in fact, an particularly good case for illustrating the value of surveys for shedding surprising light on trends in public demand for human rights due to its pronounced rollback of human rights protections during the Putin government coupled with the surging popularity of Putin himself; standard scholarly depictions of Russian political civilization and civil society; and the role of the Putin administration in pioneering tactics to: close civil society space, (such as laws requiring foreign-funded NGOs to declare themselves to be "foreign agents").

Russia's rights retrenchment

Russian federation'southward offset post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin, initially pushed to give Russians a fairly broad array of homo rights and civil liberties, including a free press, extensive liberty of assembly, religion, and expression, a potent prepare of protections in the 1993 Russian Constitution, and a series of elections that were relatively gratuitous and off-white. ¹ These accomplishments were eventually marred past corruption in the police and courts, authoritarian actions such equally the storming of parliament in 1993, abuses of power by incumbents in election campaigns, a brutal war in the secessionist republic of Chechnya marked by wanton violations of human rights by Russian troops, and other infringements. Yet, overall, the Yeltsin authorities's record was i of progress, despite some recidivism that set the stage for major reversals under Putin (Ambrosio 2009). Concrete testify of homo rights gains under Yeltsin includes the accession of Russia to the Council of Europe in 1996, its ratification of the European Convention of Man Rights in 1998, and the tardily 1990s mid-range Freedom Firm scores of 4 for liberty, civil liberties, and political rights. ^two

Starting in the 1990s, foreign countries poured money into programs designed to support the spread of human rights norms, civil society institutions, and rule of law, in particular, providing financial back up for Russian NGOs that worked on these problems (meet Mendelson and Glenn 2002; Henderson 2003; Sundstrom 2005). For case, in 2009 the United states Government Accountability Office (USGOA 2009) reported that federal agencies spent well-nigh $100 1000000 on democracy promotion in Russian federation from 2006–2008, making Russia the sixth largest recipient of such assistance, with a distinctively high proportion of these funds going to "civil society programs."

Since Vladimir Putin became Russia'due south president in 2000, his regime has eroded the progress toward protection of human rights and democratic political institutions that Russia experienced nether Yeltsin (Fish 2005; Ambrosio 2009; White 2011; Orttung 2015). The rollback began early on in his administration with moves consolidating presidential power, such equally catastrophe elections of regional governors (instead having them appointed by the president) and turning the parliament (Duma) into a safe postage stamp for presidential decrees. In the mid-2000s, Putin began limiting freedoms of the population (Carothers 2006), a campaign that accelerated dramatically in response to mass public protests against ballot falsification after controversial Dec 2011 parliamentary elections (Stoner and McFaul 2015). Both the crackdown on homo rights and the accompanying anti-Western rhetoric have intensified dramatically following the onset of Russia's armed forces conflict with Ukraine (Lokshina 2014; Freedom House 2015; Man Rights Sentry 2015; Orttung 2015; Mendelson 2015c; Gerber and Zavisca 2016).

Regime takeovers of the leading national news outlets, persecution of critical and investigative journalists, and, recently, encroachments on Internet freedom have brought the mass media to heel (Lipman 2014). A succession of prosecutions targeting opposition activists, including oil tycoonturned-democracy promoter Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the punk ring "Pussy Riot," blogger and eventual Moscow mayoral candidate Aleksei Navalny, civil rights activist Mark Galperin, caput of the liberal opposition party "Yabloko" Sergei Mitrokhin, dozens of peaceful protestors confronting electoral fraud, and numerous less-celebrated cases revealed Russia'southward criminal courts to be tools for oppression of those who footstep out of line with the Kremlin (see Provost 2015). The European Court of Human Rights was flooded in the 2000s by Russians seeking redress for human rights violations that Russian courts could not or would not provide (Trochev 2009). Other oppositionists and investigative journalists have been murdered nether mysterious circumstances.

Putin and his assembly have alleged that NGOs and individuals who receive back up from the United states and other foreign entities—which includes nearly all human rights NGOs in Russia—are a "fifth column" of traitors seeking to destroy Russia on behalf of sinister strange powers. Some argue that Putin'south tactic of labeling oppositionists as traitorous dupes of enemy states helped inspire a larger global backfire against commonwealth assistance efforts by autocratic leaders (Carothers 2006; Mendelson 2015a). A 2006 law made it increasingly difficult for NGOs to operate by tightening registration and accounting requirements (Crotty, Hall, and Ljubownikow 2014). A more ominous 2012 police requires "political" NGOs that receive foreign funding to annals equally "strange agents" and to declare themselves to be such in all interactions with the public, finer making it incommunicable for them to operate. In 2014, the Ministry of Justice was empowered to unilaterally declare NGOs to be strange agents (rather than rely on the organizations themselves to do so), and the penalties for "foreign amanuensis" NGOs take recently increased, as accept prosecutorial measures against them. Currently, almost 150 organizations have been slapped with the "foreign agent" tag, including almost all of the most prominent homo rights NGOs: Memorial, Public Verdict, the Agora Human Rights Association, Golos, and the Marriage of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers (Human Rights Lookout man 2015). Many of these organizations are on their final appeals and are likely to be shuttered soon.

The 2015 "undesirable organisation" law bans foreign and international organizations that conduct actions vaguely divers to be detrimental to Russia, subjecting Russians who work with such organizations to criminal penalties. Other laws have dramatically restricted freedom of assembly, express free speech (under the guise of banning statements that incite "extremism"), curtailed the rights of sexual minorities, prohibited employees of the military machine, judiciary, and other authorities branches from traveling abroad and criminalized the expression of certain perspectives about the Second World War. Reflecting these and other developments under Putin, Russia'southward Freedom Business firm 2015 scores for freedom, ceremonious liberties, and political rights all stood at vi, where 7 is the worst possible score (Freedom House 2015).

The Russian public and homo rights

What accept Russians thought about the precipitous rollback of borough freedoms and other human rights under Putin? The lack of public outcry suggests that the Russian population is at best indifferent toward human rights and the NGOs that promote them, despite over two decades of efforts by domestic and external organizations to cultivate a man rights culture in Russian society. The two signature trends in Russian public opinion since Russian federation'southward looting of Crimea have been surging support for Putin and rampant hostility toward the West (Gerber and Zavisca 2016), neither of which portends well for support for human rights amidst Russians. In fact, they seem to point to a deeper support for the closing of human rights and ceremonious society infinite in Russian federation: If Putin is and then pop, does it non imply that so are the specific policies he has pursued, including crackdowns on homo rights?

Academic research on how Russians view man rights, democracy, rule of law, and civil date mostly finds express supported for these ideals, at least by their conventional "Western" definitions, substantial nostalgia for the Soviet Union, and fifty-fifty admiration for Stalin (Reisinger, Miller, Hesli, and Maher 1994; Gibson 1996, 1997; Gerber and Mendelson 2002; Mendelson and Gerber 2005, 2006, 2007; Gerrits 2010; Hale 2011; Lussier 2011). Scholarly involvement in how ordinary Russians perceive man rights and democracy peaked in the early on 2000s, perhaps because the literature appeared to demonstrate that the design of ambivalence, indifference, and skepticism persisted in the face of early retrograde actions by the Putin regime. However, support for Putin and anti-Westernism are not necessarily tantamount to a wholesale endorsement of Putinism as such, and without recent public opinion polls we lack a sound empirical ground for making conclusions almost how the Russian public views human rights issues.

Judging by Putin's persistently high popularity ratings throughout the period, his reelection as president in 2012 despite oppositional street protests, and the surge in his popularity since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian public approves of these measures. ³ However, it is risky to jump to such conclusions, because Putin'south popularity may exist driven by factors other than back up for his domestic crackdown, such as Russia's record of economic growth in the 2000s or surging nationalistic sentiments (Gerber 2014). The best source of data we have about public views of policies on homo rights is public opinion data.

There has been a fair amount of survey-based research on how the Russian public views democracy. Many such studies have ended that Russians prefer order over commonwealth, oft attributing this preference to a long-standing authoritarian political culture (Gibson 1996, 1997; Reissinger et al. 1994; Lussier 2011). Others suggest that the experiences of the 1990s led Russians to associate democracy with anarchy and corruption and thus prefer Putin's more disciplinarian approach (Mishler and Willerton 2003; Petukhov and Ryabov 2004; Carnaghan 2007). Countervailing findings indicate that Russians have contradictory views about the desirability of democracy, wish to combine autonomous institutions with strong leadership and are non particularly disciplinarian in comparative perspective (Colton and McFaul 2002; Fish 2005; Hale 2011).

In whatever case, although democracy is clearly related to human being rights protections, they are not the same thing (Hafner-Burton and Ron 2009), and much less research focuses explicitly on Russians' back up for homo rights protections. Qualitative studies often conclude that Russians decline liberal conceptions of homo rights and civil liberties, they strongly favor country economic guarantees or "social rights" (at least in office due to the legacy of Soviet-era welfare provisions and security), and they are comfortable with heavy land involvement in civil society institutions (Carnaghan 2007; Henry 2009; Turbine 2012; Ljubownikow, Crotty, and Rodgers 2013; Ljubownikov and Crotty 2015). Gerber and Mendelson (2002) specifically examined views of human being rights using survey data from 2001. They identified three distinct dimensions of rights, which they labelled economic, political, and civil. Support for economic and political rights was much deeper and more widespread than support for civil rights.

Much has happened in Russia since the early 2000s, and Russians' views of ceremonious rights may accept changed since then. The various commonwealth help and human being rights promotion efforts of domestic NGOs that began in the 1990s and continued through much of the 2000s may accept increased public sensation and appreciation of ceremonious liberties. Long-term growth of education, urbanization, exposure to global discourses well-nigh human rights, and Internet utilize could also have strengthened human rights norms in Russian society in the terminal decade or and then. Modernization theory (Lipset 1960) and its offshoots such equally Inglehart'southward (1990) arguments regarding postmaterialist culture would lead to such a prediction. However, most studies of Russians' views of democracy and civil lodge institutions call for skepticism that back up for civil liberties would increase, given their association with liberal credo explicitly condemned as "Western" in the regime's resurgent nationalist rhetoric. While not definitive, robust support for Putin during his crackdown on human being rights is suggestive that human rights—and specifically civil liberties—are low priorities for most Russians.

Ultimately, the extent of support for human being rights in Russian federation remains an empirical question. In addition, it remains to be seen whether Russian public support for Putin in general is tantamount to support for his policies regarding human rights and civil society. For instance, no studies have examined how Russians view Putin'southward arguments demonizing NGOs that receive foreign funding. The political touch of these claims and the associated "foreign agent" law is hard to underestimate, given the chronic need for external funding that homo rights NGOs experience around the world (Ron et al. 2016). Finally, it is of particular involvement whether the Russian center grade—defined as the highly educated, urbanized, and well-to-do—has distinct views regarding human rights, every bit modernization theory would predict.

Data and measures

The information integral to this report come from ten harmonized and pooled cross-sectional Russian surveys spanning 2001–2015. Details regarding the surveys, sampling, fieldwork, quality control procedures are provided in the online appendix. ^iv

Two divide batteries of questions provide the measures of views of human rights. The "rights" bombardment included nine questions measuring support for three "economical rights" (the right to work, to a minimum living standard, and to private belongings), three "rights of personal integrity" (freedom from torture, arbitrary abort, and slavery), and 3 "civil rights" (liberty of expression, religion/conscience, and assembly). ⁵ Respondents were told that each of these rights is included in the Universal Announcement of Human Rights of the Un, which was signed past the Soviet Wedlock, but that people have varying views of how important they are. They were and so asked to indicate which statement all-time reflects their view of each particular correct:

1. The ascertainment of this correct should be a pinnacle priority of the state;

2. This correct should be observed, just in our electric current circumstances there are other more of import priorities;

3. This right is neither important nor harmful to Russian federation;

4. This right might be necessary for other countries, just, in our circumstances, it might hurt our land'south interests;

5. This right definitely contradicts the political and economical interests of our country;

6. I practice not accept a strong opinion about this correct or I have never thought about it.

For our purposes, the cardinal stardom is betwixt those who strongly support a particular right (Response 1), those who weakly support the right (Response 2), and those who practice not back up the right (Responses 3–six, none of which signal any support at all for protecting the detail right). ⁶ Thus, I plummet Responses three–6, yielding a three-category mensurate of support for each of the nine rights. The "rights" battery was non on the 2015 survey. Unfortunately, this makes it hard to say whether the intensification of anti-Western rhetoric and deportment starting with Russia's looting of Crimea in early 2014 has afflicted support for human rights in Russia.

The "NGO" battery includes two questions near whether respondents support or oppose strange funding of ii types of domestic NGOs: those that monitor elections (an explicitly "political" NGO) and those that work on ecological problems. There were three response choices: back up, oppose, and indifferent. I combine volunteered "hard to say" responses with the latter category. This battery appeared only the 2012 and 2015 surveys, merely it is worth analyzing because of the growing prominence of restrictions on foreign funding of NGOs in the armory of tactics states use to counter organizations that promote rights (Christensen and Weinstein 2013; Dupuy et al. 2016). The degree and structuration of Russian public support for, opposition, and indifference to foreign funding for such organizations indicates whether the arguments that Putin and other leaders take made to justify these actions resonate with the public and show which groups of the population are more probable to find them convincing.

Trends over time

The weighted distributions for our 11 measures of support for rights in each year the questions were asked reveal trends over time in the average levels of support for human rights among 20- to 59-year-old Russians (see Table 1). Early in the Putin era, public back up for economic and personal-integrity rights was robust (Gerber and Mendelson 2002). In 2001, from 62 percent (for freedom from arbitrary arrest) to 89 per centum (right of a minimum standard of living) were stiff supporters, with most figures for these rights above 70 percent. Strong support for these rights tended to remain stable (with minor trendless fluctuations) in the early on 2000s. Despite slight decreases between 2004 and 2010, iii quarters or more of 20-to 59-twelvemonth-old Russians strongly supported all six economic and personal-integrity rights at the end of 2012. The enduring support for economical rights confirms the conventional wisdom that Russians have been advocates of what others label "social rights" (Henry 2009). The equally strong support for personal-integrity rights is consistent with claims that these rights are well-nigh universal norms (Keck and Sikkink 1998), and qualitative studies of views of rights in Russia (Sundstrom 2005). At the same time, these personal integrity rights fall outside the rubric of "social rights" that Russians take been known to back up.

Table i.

Trends in levels of back up for nine specific rights and ii types of NGOs in Russian federation.

		2001	2002	2003	2004	2010	2011	2012
A. Caste of back up for specific human rights (respondents historic period 20–59)
Freedom from capricious abort	Stiff	62%	73%	68%	74%	72%	73%	75%
	Weak	18%	16%	23%	fifteen%	17%	nineteen%	18%
	None	20%	10%	viii%	eleven%	11%	8%	7%
Freedom of conscience, organized religion	Strong	23%	30%	26%	32%	42%	twoscore%	42%
	Weak	thirty%	32%	37%	32%	27%	35%	34%
	None	47%	38%	38%	36%	31%	25%	24%
Right to work	Potent	79%	86%	83%	86%	77%	69%	74%
	Weak	12%	9%	13%	10%	fifteen%	22%	xix%
	None	9%	5%	4%	4%	8%	ix%	7%
Freedom of expression	Strong	38%	43%	40%	43%	49%	47%	53%
	Weak	25%	29%	33%	27%	28%	34%	30%
	None	37%	27%	27%	30%	23%	xviii%	17%
Freedom from torture	Strong	74%	85%	82%	88%	77%	78%	81%
	Weak	12%	7%	ten%	6%	10%	fifteen%	14%
	None	fourteen%	7%	8%	6%	13%	seven%	5%
Right to a minimum living standard	Strong	89%	94%	94%	94%	88%	82%	85%
	Weak	7%	3%	five%	3%	7%	13%	10%
	None	4%	iii%	two%	2%	five%	five%	vi%
Right to own property	Strong	eighty%	86%	85%	89%	81%	74%	76%
	Weak	12%	9%	11%	6%	12%	19%	xv%
	None	8%	four%	five%	4%	vii%	7%	9%
Freedom of assembly, association	Strong	24%	28%	28%	29%	37%	37%	45%
	Weak	24%	32%	32%	31%	27%	33%	29%
	None	52%	40%	xl%	41%	36%	30%	26%
Liberty from slavery	Stiff		89%	88%	92%	83%	78%	80%
	Weak		5%	7%	3%	eight%	13%	12%
	None		7%	4%	5%	nine%	8%	eight%

		2012	2015
B. Views on foreign funding for NGOs that… (respondents age 18–49)
Monitor elections	Support	17%	21%
	Indifferent	28%	36%
	Oppose	54%	43%
Protect the environment	Support	67%	38%
	Indifferent	21%	33%
	Oppose	12%	30%

The more than dramatic trends over time pertain to support for civil rights. Consistent with standard accounts of the preferences of Russians, only 23 percent strongly supported freedom of conscience, 24 percentage freedom of assembly, and 38 percent liberty of speech in 2001 and these levels grew modestly and unevenly in the early 2000s. However, by 2010, we observe more substantial increases in potent back up, which continued through 2012. Overall, from 2001 to 2012 stiff back up for liberty of censor, assembly, and expression grew by 84 percent, 88 percent, and 39 percentage, respectively. A majority strongly endorsed liberty of expression in 2012. The percentages of Russians who voiced no support of these rights all fell by approximately half, then the increases in "strong" back up did non come up at the expense of "weak" support. ⁷

In short, the surveys reveal a gradual only previously unnoticed and potentially of import increase in public support for civil rights in Russia. We practise non know whether support for civil rights has continued to grow, or fifty-fifty endured at its 2012 levels, since. Simply the unmistakable trends of growing endorsement of civil liberties evident in Table 1 cut confronting the view that the Russian public has rushed to support the Putin regime'due south agenda of closing ceremonious gild space.

The responses to the two "NGO" questions, while failing to reveal a clear trend from 2012–2015, cast doubt on whether Russians accept wholesale the regime's condemnation of strange funding of NGOs. There is no consensus against such funding, fifty-fifty for an NGO that monitors elections. Official media accused 1 such NGO, Golos, of serving strange powers just earlier the December 2011 parliamentary election. Fifty-four pct of Russian respondents opposed strange funding of that type of NGO in 2012, but that number fell to 43 percent by 2015 despite the ratcheting up of anti-Western rhetoric by the Kremlin. Moreover, a sizable minority of Russians approve of foreign funding of groups that monitor elections, and over one tertiary are either indifferent or practice not have a articulate opinion. Views of foreign funding of environmental NGOs are even more mixed, which makes intuitive sense because such organizations are less overtly political, though the tendency from 2012 to 2015 is 1 of increasing opposition.

Statistical results

Support for human rights

The first step is to combine the nine measures of back up for homo rights into a more manageable set of aggregate scales. Thus far, I accept divided the nine rights covered in the surveys into three groups— economic, personal-integrity, and civil rights—following Gerber and Mendelson (2002). However, a chief components factor analysis of the pooled data shows that just 2 latent factors underlie the correlations amidst the nine measures (see Table ii).

Table 2.

Principal components gene analysis of support for 9 specific rights. (Gene loadings and unique variances from the rotated solution).

	Factor i	Factor 2	Uniqueness
Freedom from arbitary arrest	.516	.323	.630
Liberty of conscience/religion	.093	.780	.383
Right to work	.659	.220	.517
Liberty of expression	.186	.757	.393
Freedom from torture	.701	.167	.481
Right to minimal living standard	.782	.037	.387
Right to ain property	.728	.172	.440
Freedom of assembly	.119	.785	.370
Freedom from slavery	.722	.157	.454

The rotated solution indicates that the "economic" and "personal-integrity" rights all load on a single factor, while the three "civil" rights load on a 2d gene. ⁸ This design suggests that the nine rights fall into two categories more than reminiscent of Ronald Inglehart's (1990) stardom between materialist and postmaterialist values than T. H. Marshall's (1950) tripartite schema of civil, political, and social rights. The six rights that load on Factor 1 relate to "textile" needs for economical sustenance and physical well-being (including liberty from actual abuse and coercion). Standard claims that Russians support social rights only capture part of the picture: Russians perceive rights that protect them from physical abuse and coercion equally closely related to archetype social rights. Henceforward, I label the constellation of half dozen rights that load on Factor 1 equally "material rights," which embrace both rights of personal integrity and social rights. However, the analysis likewise confirms that they recollect of civil rights, which load on Factor 2, differently. These rights chronicle to "postmaterial" concerns for freedom and social and political expression. Still, postmaterial values represent a broad category that as well includes such diverse notions every bit feminism, ecological concerns, and rights of sexual minorities, so information technology is more precise to continue referring to the three rights that load on Factor 2 every bit "ceremonious rights."

For the residuum of the analysis of support for human being rights, I constructed blended categorical scales corresponding to ceremonious and material rights. Respondents are "strong supporters" of a particular set of rights if they chose the first category (indicating that protecting a correct should exist a tiptop priority of the government) for all the individual rights that found the scale. Thus, "strong supporters" consistently assign top priority to all the individual rights that tap into a item dimension of rights (that is, civil or material). To further classify the remaining respondents into weak supporters and nonsupporters of a particular set of rights, I assigned integer scores to the v substantive response categories for each individual rights question and assigned a "neutral" value of 3 to "hard to say" responses. Respondents with average scores for the individual questions greater than iii are "weak supporters" (considering 3 denotes complete neutrality) and those with an average of 3 or less are "nonsupporters."

The annual distributions of views toward civil rights using the composite scale confirms the trend of increasing support over time (run into Figure one). Only well-nigh x% considered all 3 civil rights a elevation priority in 2001; past 2012, the number had risen to 28 percent. Correspondingly, the estimated percentage of 20- to 59-year-former Russians who do not back up civil rights at all fell from 24 percentage to 9 per centum. Despite the narrowing of civic space and rollback of civil liberties, public back up for freedom of expression, religion, and assembly grew steadily during the kickoff decade of Putin's rule. The "methodological" bar for strong support for material rights is higher, because it requires respondents to choose the "top priority" category for six rather than 3 individual rights. Nonetheless, nearly half the 20- to 59-twelvemonth-old Russian population has strongly supported material rights from 2001–2012, with some trendless fluctuation around the average of 52 percent (see Effigy 2). Most of the remainder are weak supporters, with nonsupporters never exceeding iii percent.

Dynamics of support for civil rights in Russia, 2001–2012. Source: Estimated from information sources in Tabular array 1.

Dynamics of support for material rights in Russia, 2001–2012. Source: Estimated from data sources in Tabular array i.

To see whether some groups of Russians are more supportive of human rights than others, I estimated multinomial logistic regressions for the two blended scales (see Tabular array iii). The models include measures of age, gender, pedagogy, household income, piece of work status, locality type, household size, and year, plus interaction terms between a linear specification of yr and, respectively, education, age, Moscow residence, and St. Petersburg residence. ⁹ The interaction terms indicate whether the increase in back up for civil rights evident in Figure 1 occurred uniformly across diverse groups or, in contrast, was concentrated within particular groups (young adults, the highly educated, or residents of Moscow or St. Petersburg).

Table iii.

Multinomial logistic regressions, back up for civil and material rights in Russia, 2001–2012.

	Civil Rights				Cloth Rights
	Strong back up		No support		Strong support		No support
Dependent variable Outome	B	RSE	B	RSE	B	RSE	B	RSE
Education (general secondary)
Academy	0.vi**	.156	−0.4**	.141	0.2	.110	0.0	.514
Specialized sec.	0.2**	.097	0.0	.101	0.1	.073	0.five**	.243
Lower vocational	0.ane	.117	−0.one	.114	0.ane	.085	0.3	.312
Less than sec.	0.2	.175	0.2	.156	0.0	.122	0.ix	.363
Woman	−0.one	.065	−0.1	.073	−0.1	.052	0.3	.181
Age (−20)	0.0**	.006	0.0	.005	0.0**	.004	0.0**	.016
Household income quintile (bottom)
Second					0.0	.096	−0.3	.338
3rd					0.1	.097	−0.2	.326
4th					−0.i	.098	−0.four	.350
Pinnacle					0.0	.107	−0.2	.404
Top three	0.ane	.083	−0.ii*	.090
Missing	0.2*	.104	0.0	.112	0.0	.102	0.v	.321
Work status (working for hire)
Self-employed	0.0	.198	−;0.4*	.210	−0.1	.142	−0.6	.485
Military/police	0.0	.395	0.1	.359	0.0	.299	0.5	.810
Non working	0.i	.073	0.1	.078	0.0	.057	0.4**	.182
Moscow	0.4**	.149	−0.3**	.150	0.2	.116	0.ii	.480
St. Petersburg	ane.0**	.280	−0.viii**	.388	−0.1	.149	−0.1	.788
Other large urban center	−0.1	.090	−0.one	.096	0.0	.070	0.5**	.206
Rural/hamlet	−0.2*	.086	−0.ii*	.092	0.0	.065	0.2	.231
Household size	0.0	.028	0.0	.029	0.0	.022	−0.2**	.079
Year (2004)
2001	−0.four**	.159	0.four**	.134	−0.viii**	.107	−0.1	.497
2002	−0.3*	.140	0.0	.131	−0.three**	.100	0.0	.493
2003	−0.ii	.139	0.0	.139	−0.iv**	.099	−0.8	.604
2010	1.one **	.147	0.1	.152	−0.two**	.111	0.8	.522
2011	0.9**	.157	−0.2	.166	−0.2	.118	0.8	.556
2012	i.2**	.185	−0.4**	.216	0.1	.143	0.9	.627
Academy*twelvemonth	−0.1**	.017	0.0	.018	0.0**	.013	0.0	.055
Age(−20)*year	0.0 **	.001	0.0	.001	0.0**	.001	0.0	.002
Moscow*year	−0.ane**	.020	0.0	.026	0.0**	.016	0.0	.061
St.Petersburg*year	−0.1**	.037	0.ane*	.052
Abiding	−2.1**	.178	−ane.ane**	.186	0.1	.143	−iii.472	.644
Log-likelihood	−9105.3				−8147.ane

Education, age, income, type of locality, and self-employment are all systematically related to support for civil rights. Judging past the parameter estimates, more education, historic period, and residence in Moscow and St. Petersburg all increase the odds of beingness a potent supporter, while a university degree, income in the top three quintiles, and self-employment decrease the odds of existence a nonsupporter, relative to the probability of weak support. Also, the pattern of increasing strong support and declining nonsupport over time is robust to statistical controls for the covariates in the model. However, four interaction effects involving time are statistically significant, and they complicate the motion picture. Their signs imply that the differentials in support for civil rights along the axes of teaching, age, and locality type shrank during the 2000s.

To understand the extent of the changes over time in these furnishings, as well as convert the multinomial logistic regression (MLR) coefficients into a more intuitive metric, information technology is instructive to plot the predicted probabilities of unlike categories of support for selected values of didactics, historic period, and locality type over time (meet Figures ​ three–5). ¹⁰ Differentials in support for civil rights by education, age, and locality type diminished over the grade of 2001–2012. In fact, nearly of the gains in stiff back up for civil rights occurred among those groups that initially were least likely to exist strong supporters: those with less than academy pedagogy, younger adults, and residents of medium-sized towns. The convergence of the eight series effectually higher levels of potent support (run across Figure three) and lower levels of nonsupport (come across Effigy 5) is striking. For instance, the differences in the probability of strongly supporting civil rights between university-educated fifty-year-old Muscovites and loftier-school-educated 20-yr-quondam residents of medium cities were .28 versus .07 in 2001, but .21 versus .24 in 2012. In essence, middle-course status mattered in shaping support for ceremonious rights in the early 2000s but did non past the start of the next decade. Contrary to what we might expect on the basis of modernization theory and standard findings of greater back up for human rights among more than educated, urbanized citizens, in Russia, information technology is the less educated and residents outside the state's "capital letter" cities whose adherence to civil rights norms increased. The historic period slope disappeared during the flow. This could reflect cohort replacement (more supportive cohorts leaving the "age window" to be replaced by more than supportive young cohorts) or an unlinking of historic period and back up for human rights. As Figure 4 shows, there were minimal or no differences past instruction, age, and locality in the probability of weak support for ceremonious rights throughout the entire period.

Predicted probabilities of strong back up for civil rights by historic period, education, Moscow residence, and yr. Source: Estimated from Preferred Model in Table 3.

Predicted probabilities of weak back up for civil rights by age, educational activity, Moscow residence, and twelvemonth. Source: Estimated from Preferred Model in Table 3.

Predicted probabilities of no back up for civil rights by age, instruction, Moscow residence, and yr. Source: Estimated from Preferred Model in Table iii.

In dissimilarity to the results for ceremonious rights, nosotros detect very few significant relationship betwixt socioeconomic and demographic variables and back up for fabric rights. Age is associated with elevated probability of strongly supporting these rights, while Russians with the least teaching, those who are non working, and those who reside in large cities other than Moscow and Leningrad are more probable to be nonsupporters. None of the interaction effects are significant. Given the scant number of significant relationships, the lack of a articulate and coherent pattern, and the stability in relationships over time, it is not worth plotting the magnitudes of the effects in terms of predicted probabilities. Variation in support for fabric rights is much less linked to variables that often predict views of social and political bug than variation in back up for civil rights. Finally, the results provide no evidence that members of the armed forces and constabulary are less supportive of human being rights than other Russians.

Political NGOs that receive strange funding

Views regarding foreign funding of political NGOs vary systematically by the variables of interest, but in some counterintuitive ways. To facilitate estimation, I nowadays the results of the MLR model of support for election-monitoring NGOs in terms of average marginal effects on the probabilities of falling in each of the three categories of support (see Tabular array 4).

Tabular array iv.

Average marginal effects from multinomial logistic regression model for back up for foreign funding of ballot-monitoring NGOs.

	Support		Indifferent		Oppose
	AME	SE	AME	SE	AME **	SE
Education (general secondary)
University	−.016	.022	−.098 **	.027	.114 **	.029
Specialized sec.	−.040*	.023	−.036	.027	.076	.029
Lower vocational	−.011	.033	.068*	.039	−.056	.044
Less than sec.	−.040	.056	−.068	.067	.108*	.064
Woman	.008	.015	.060 **	.019	−.068 **	.020
Age(−18)	.000	.001	−.002	.001	.002*	.001
Income quintile (lesser)
2d quintile	−.005	.025	.047	.031	−.042	.033
3rd quintile	.047*	.027	.029	.031	−.076 **	.033
Quaternary quintile	.034	.028	−.041	.033	.007	.036
Top quintile	.088 **	.036	.010	.040	−.098 **	.044
Income missing	.014	.025	.121 **	.033	−.136 **	.034
Work status (working for hire)
Self-employed	.014	.038	−.003	.045	−.011	.045
Armed forces/Police	−.421 **	.159	.135	.130	.286 **	.133
Not working	−.005	.017	−.015	.020	.020	.021
Locality type (medium urban center or modest town)
Moscow	.136 **	.024	.088 **	.033	−.224 **	.036
St.Petersburg	.060	.039	−.038	.056	−.021	.062
Other large city	−.012	.021	−.017	.026	.030	.027
Rural/village	−.004	.020	−.023	.024	.027	.025
Household size	−.020 **	.006	−.016 **	.008	.036 **	.008
2015 vs. 2012	.068 **	.016	.086 **	.020	−.153 **	.022

University education raises the probability of opposing such funding by an average of .114 and specialized secondary by .076 relative to general secondary education. At the same time, the least educated Russians as well are more likely to oppose such funding than general secondary graduates. Two other markers of eye-class status operate in the opposite manner: Russians in the meridian income quintile and Moscow residents are strikingly more than likely than their those in the bottom quintile and residents of middle-sized towns to support foreign funding and, correspondingly, less likely to oppose it. Here, we do observe intuitive effects of serving in the military or police: Current employees of those institutions are significantly more likely to toe the government's line on the result of foreign funding of election-monitoring NGOs. Women are more than likely to register indifference to foreign funding than men. The results are broadly similar with respect to foreign funding of ecology NGOs, with some exceptions: Most notably, employment in the military machine and police is unrelated to views on strange funding of environmental NGOs (see Table A3 in the online appendix).

The opposing directions of the effects of didactics, compared to Moscow residence and income, propose that the variables generally linked together as reflecting the impact of "modernization" via the heart class on views of various political institutions should be disaggregated, because they can cutting in different ways. The results besides advise that elite groups—those with the most income who reside in the capital letter—are the most resistant to the Putin regime'southward demonizing of foreign-funded NGOs as lackeys of the West. This implies that the strength of resistance to this tool for endmost ceremonious club space is greater than its numbers.

Decision

Survey data on how the Russian public has viewed homo rights over the menses 2001–2012 contain several surprises. Rather than brand the standard distinction between political, ceremonious, and social (or economical) rights, Russians think of rights in just two dimensions: textile rights and civil rights. Political theorists may have good reason to separate economic rights from rights of personal integrity, but Russians see the individual rights comprising these different belittling concepts as of the aforementioned piece. This tendency, which recalls Inglehart (1990) on the materialist versus postmaterialist centrality of values, may obtain in other countries. Studies of homo rights perceptions elsewhere might test for a similar binary distinction in mass publics.

Consistent with other inquiry (Sundstrom 2005; Mendelson and Gerber 2008; Henry 2009), support for material rights has been strong throughout the Putin era, despite their persistent and increasing violation. But, reverse to standard accounts of Russian public opinion, support for civil liberties increased. Although modernization theory would lead us to expect this increase to be concentrated among the more educated, urbanized, and well-to-do segments of the population—which would be consistent with accounts of the 2011–2012 prodemocracy protest move that emphasized its middle-grade character—the data betoken the opposite. Similarly, Ron and Crow (2015) found simply inconsistent back up for the conventional wisdom that the center class is more supportive of human rights norms in their iv-country study.

More theory and research are necessary to understand what has driven the gradual only steady shift in support, as well equally its concentration in unexpected social groups. Support among the middle classes did not accomplish a ceiling, as information technology remained beneath 30% among university-educated Muscovites. Ane possibility is that the efforts of domestic NGOs and foreign civil gild programs eventually started to behave fruit in particular past reaching constituencies who were not addressed in the 1990s. Strong support for civil liberties within the middle classes may have peaked by the commencement of the Putin regime, while untapped potential remained for recruiting new "converts" among the less educated and non-Muscovites. Another possibility is that the Putin regime offers alternative incentives to middle-class Russians, such equally task stability and upwards income mobility, which offset a secular tendency for them to embrace human rights norms.

The Russian public is quite divided over whether political NGOs should receive foreign funding. This will probably non end the Putin regime from continuing its policies of dandy down on such funding, but it is important that both domestic and foreign advocates for man rights in Russian federation realize that in that location are sizable constituencies inside Russia that potentially support their efforts. It is also striking that Russians with the highest incomes and those who reside in Moscow are the virtually probable to oppose restrictions on strange funding of NGOs. The axiomatic limits of Russian regime propaganda at swaying a majority of the population against foreign funding of NGOs suggest that, appearances to the contrary, large swathes of the Russian public reject efforts to impose restrictions on foreign funding. Even larger portions of Azeri, Kyrgyz, and Ukrainian societies similarly favor foreign funding of NGOs (Gerber and Zavisca 2016). In a similar vein, Ron and Crow (2015) found niggling confirmation that linking human rights NGOs to foreign funding hurts their public epitome. Taken together, these findings point to the importance for scholars and practitioners of further research on how publics react to steps taken by governments to limit the development of NGOs in the name of fears of the supposed malicious influence of strange funding.

A note of caution: the human rights situation in Russian federation is grim indeed, and there is lilliputian open up opposition to the authorities's measures to close civil lodge infinite and to roll back the civil liberties established in the 1990s. However, the data suggest that the conventional wisdom amongst pundits and other observers exaggerates the extent to which the Russian population endorses Putin'due south domestic agenda. Support for Putin should not exist conflated with deep-seated support for Putinism, equally some accept argued (Laqueur 2015). Russian society is complex and heterogeneous. We should non be lured by high poll numbers showing support for Putin and hostility toward the United States into presuming societal consensus behind the endmost of ceremonious lodge infinite or a crackdown on political NGOs that receive strange funding. An important limitation of this written report is that the questions pertaining to views of the nine specific rights were non asked in the 2015 survey; therefore, we cannot say whether the surge of nationalism and enthusiasm over the annexation of Ukraine in 2014 somehow changed the dynamic evident in the information from 2001–2012. This article has emphasized the value of analyzing change over time in demand for rights, and it would be inconsistent with that principle to rule out the possibility that recent geopolitical and domestic developments might influence demand for rights. Withal, other survey data from 2015 suggest that in that year the Russian public was similarly divided about issues such equally the impact of protests, the importance of freedom of assembly, a strong political opposition, free and fair elections, and rule of law as it has been near the importance of civil rights (Gerber and Zavisca 2016).

Normative change is a gradual process, and the Russian public is still divided with respect to the importance of civil freedoms. But the increase in support for them and the continuing ambiguity regarding foreign funding of NGOs should provide tentative hope to those who wish to run across a man rights culture accept root in Russian federation, in the face of an avalanche of negative news. Nether current political circumstances, advocates have little choice merely to accept a long-term perspective. They should, still, accept the findings reported here as a sign of potential for success in the long term.

Public opinion research has its skeptics amidst human being rights scholars and activists: For example, Kenneth Roth (2015) argues confronting overemphasizing majority opinions and instead attending to how strategically important groups view man rights (encounter also Pruce 2015). But surveys are valuable not simply for identifying an "average" at one point in time but they can also yield unexpected insight into trends in public support for human rights (which activists often seek to influence) and can place and calibrate the strength of pro- and antirights constituencies. This report shows how surveys can generate information about the level, tendency, and distribution of demand for human rights in a particular society, too as shed low-cal on how societies answer to policies that governments implement in guild to impede the work of human rights NGOs. Another major recent survey besides produced findings that challenge received wisdom (Ron and Crow 2015). Inevitably, these studies raise questions that crave additional theorizing and empirical replications. But in then doing, they brand a case for the utility of detailed single-country surveys of the level, nature, and trends of public demand for human rights, which in turn play a vital, if underappreciated, role in many theories of how activism tin can produce improvements in man rights regimes.

Footnotes

^1. See Bowring (2009) for a comprehensive overview of human being rights under Yeltsin. Encounter Fish (2005), Ambrosio (2009), and White (2011) for accounts of Russian federation'southward post-Soviet political trajectory.

^two. Freedom House assigns quantitative scores annually to the countries on which it reports ranging from one (fully protected) to seven (fully violated) based on a weighted alphabetize of state practices in the relevant domain. Come across Landman (2004, Footnote 53) for details.

^iii. The authoritative Levada Analytic Center publishes on its website a time serial of blessing ratings for Putin since he first became president in 2000 (Levada Analytic Heart 2016). His ratings have never dipped below threescore% approval. After languishing in the 60–70% range at the showtime of his third term in office in 2012, Putin's approval shot above lxxx% later on the annexation of Crimea in February 2014 and has remained at or near that mark since. A survey list experiment indicates the high poll numbers reverberate "real" attitudes (Frye, Gehlbach, Marquardt, and Reuter 2016). In 2008, afterwards his second term in office, Putin temporarily yielded the presidency to his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev. However, most observers see the Medvedev administration, which ended with Putin'due south ballot to a third term in 2012, as having been under tight control by Putin, who was prime minister during information technology. Accordingly, it is standard practice to treat the entire catamenia since 2000 as the "Putin era."

^4. The 2015 data are from the Comparative Housing Experiences and Social Stability survey, which was supported in part by the The states Army Research Laboratory and the Usa Army Research Function via the Minerva Research Initiative program nether grant number W911NF1310303. The views reported hither do not represent those of the US Army or the US government.

^v. We used the original language from the Universal Declaration to nowadays the rights to respondents, and they were listed in the order shown in Table 1, not grouped by the three "types" of rights. The brusque descriptions used hither for simplicity were not given to the respondents. The 2001 survey did not ask about freedom from slavery, just it is unlikely that omission affects whatsoever of the results, because that question is combined with 5 others into an aggregate calibration.

^6. By aggregating the last four responses into a unmarried "no back up" category we lose information about variations in nonsupport — for example, distinguishing those who are indifferent from those who actually oppose a right from those who take no opinion at all. While distinctions of degree and kind among nonsupporters merit interest, I leave their analysis to futurity research considering the primary focus of the present article is on levels of back up for different human rights, and information technology greatly simplifies analysis to grouping the variations in nonsupport together. It is worth noting, even so, that very small-scale numbers of respondents in whatever twelvemonth expressed outright opposition to specific rights (Responses 4 and 5 combined) — in all cases nether 5%. Furthermore, sensitivity tests showed that treating the "difficult to say" category as distinct in the gene analysis and multinomial regressions reported in this article yielded substantively identical results; therefore, the more than parsimonious aggregation is preferable for clarity of exposition.

^7. The decreases in "no" support were driven mainly by shrinking percentages of "don't know" answers: indifference and (less commonly) skepticism toward these rights remained fairly stable.

^eight. This pattern is robust to alternative specifications of the original questions' scales, listwise deletion of "hard to say" responses, alternative rotation methods, and catamenia-specific analyses.

^9. See Table A2 in the Online Appendix for models that exclude the interaction terms, which significantly improve the fit of the models. I besides tested interactions involving income and gender, merely none of these proved to be statistically significant. See the Online Appendix for explanations of measures of covariates.

^ten. These predicted probabilities are obtained by entering dissimilar values on the variables of involvement (age, instruction, and the "Moscow" dummy variable) into the appropriate equations using the parameter estimates in Table 4, property constant income in the third quintile and the other variables at their baselines. Thus, the predicted probabilities in Figures ​ 3–v are those for center income males who are working for hire and live alone.

Notes on correspondent

Theodore P. Gerber is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Middle for Russia, Eastward Europe, and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research examines social stratification, family demography, migration, and public opinion in Russia and other sometime Soviet countries.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082807/

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