Estonia is an uncommonly appropriate setting for study of attitude change, life course patterns, and inter-ethnic attitudes and contact. Since the nineteenth century, Estonia has been in the forefront of social change in the Russian Empire (until 1920) and in the Soviet Union (since 1940). In the late nineteenth century, the provinces that become Estonia and Latvia were the only parts of the Russian Empire in which there was evidence of voluntary fertility control in rural areas. Currently, the population of Estonia has the highest educational level of any republic in the Soviet Union. Depending on the indicator used, either Estonia or Latvia has the highest standard of living within the Soviet Union. Gorbachev has used Estonia as a test case for some aspects of perestroika. It could be argued that if perestroika could not work in Estonia, it could not work anywhere. Social changes in Estonia have often foreshadowed changes elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Thus, examination of attitutde change in Estonia can throw light on future developments elsewhere in the Soviet Union and also provide a useful comparison to changes now occurring in Eastern Europe. In addition, Estonia has a long tradition of survey research by sociologists. This project investigates continuity and change in social and political life in contemporary Estonia through analysis of a re-interview household survey jointly planned, designed, and directed by the U.S. and Estonian scholars involved with this project and conducted in 1991. The new survey updates the content of the initially administered 1979 questionnaire and adds items that will facilitate international comparisons and allow testing of hypotheses from the current sociological and comparative politics literatures. Specifically, it focuses on life course issues relating education, marriage, childbearing, labor force participation and career advancement; and on intra-generational change in social and political attitudes from the Brezhnev to the Gorbachev period and the process of inter-generational transmission of values and attitudes. This project will contribute to our understanding of the relations between education, childbearing, and labor force participation; political socialization; political participation; and patterns of regime support and the bases of that support. This project will also contribute to the support and strengthening of the infrastructure of sociological research in Estonia.
