The victory of the nationalists in the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections followed by the victory of the communists in the 1995 parliamentary elections raises questions about the nature of public support for apparently undemocratic political organizations during periods of democratic transition. This project seeks to understand the bases for support for communist and nationalist political parties in contemporary Russia. In order to do so, this project will continue a series of surveys gauging the state of the Russian democratic experiment by examining the attitudes and behaviors of the Russian electorate during the Presidential campaign in summer 1996. Examination of the current campaign and the nature of Presidential politics will facilitate understanding of the consolidation of democracy in Russia or identify its tenuous attraction to the Russian public. Face-to-face interviews will be conducted with 4000 respondents in a stratified national probability sample. The survey will be conducted by leading scholars at Moscow University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Data from the 1993-1996 surveys will be archived to permit secondary analysis of these important data.
