New Post-Soviet Russians?: The Effect of Crisis and Disinformation on Societal Values

• In Event: The Politics of Russia’s War Machine

Abstract

Beginning in the early 2010’s, the Russian state launched a state values project, a
series of top-down regime narratives intended to influence societal cohesion and
provide a counter to Western values such as individual freedom and universalism. The
Kremlin initially took a multi-pronged approach to shaping core values by stressing
different dimensions of conservatism—patriotic, statist, religious, and family values.
While a good deal of research explores the production and strategy of state narratives,
their effect on society remains unclear. Scholars generally explain individual value
formation as a long-term, contested socialization process and not a response to events
or state rhetoric. Earlier studies of Russian values support this theory, demonstrating
the varied effect of the Kremlin’s values messaging across individuals and groups.
Newer research on state narrative strategies and the effect of crisis suggests a potential
alternative path to societal values change. This paper uses a natural experiment to test
a short-term theory of values change based on matched national samples before and
after Russia’s war in Ukraine. By replicating a battery of values questions to measure
different dimensions of state, religious, and patriotic conservatism before and after the
war, the evidence can test whether societal values have changed and whether societal
beliefs shifted to create a uniform definition of conservatism that spans competing
dimensions, or if they strengthen some conservative dimensions and not others.

Author

• Regina Smyth, Indiana U Bloomington