Orientations toward Authority in an Authoritarian State: Moscow in 1990

Little is known about citizens' orientations to authority in authoritarian regimes. A 1990 Moscow survey offered an unusual opportunity to examine socialist citizens' views of military crimes of obedience, their attitudes toward political dissent, and predictors of each. In fact, there was no relationship between respondents' attitudes about disobedience (whether they would refuse orders to carry out military war crimes) and their responses about political dissent. However, greater education was associated both with claiming that one would disobey and with engaging in dissent. Exploratory analyses of additional attitude questions revealed two orthogonal factors-socialist conservatism and political powerlessness-which account for some of the effect of education and help explain the role of Communist Party membership. Party members felt more politically efficacious, but nonmembers were more likely to protest.