Russian Public Opinion on Human Rights and the War in Chechnya

Abstract

Two specialists on Russian society and politics analyze how Russians view human rights and the conflict in Chechnya, as well as factors shaping views on these issues within Russia, based on a survey conducted in October 2001. The authors discuss how their results diverge from the findings of other studies of Russian public opinion on issues relating to democracy, consider several explanations for the patterns they observe, and propose some appropriate policy measures.uman rights norms appear to be more deeply entrenched in Europe than they were fifty-four years ago during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or even twenty-seven years ago at the dawn of the Helsinki process.2 A growing body of social science literature examines the processes whereby human rights and democratic norms have steadily diffused throughout the international community during the last several decades (

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

“…Thus far, I have divided the nine rights covered in the surveys into three groups— economic, personal-integrity, and civil rights—following Gerber and Mendelson (2002). However, a principal components factor analysis of the pooled data shows that only two latent factors underlie the correlations among the nine measures (see Table 2).…”

“…Academic research on how Russians view human rights, democracy, rule of law, and civil engagement generally finds limited supported for these ideals, at least by their conventional “Western” definitions, substantial nostalgia for the Soviet Union, and even 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 interest in how ordinary Russians perceive human rights and democracy peaked in the early 2000s, perhaps because the literature appeared to demonstrate that the pattern of ambivalence, indifference, and skepticism persisted in the face of early retrograde actions by the Putin regime.…”

“…Qualitative studies often conclude that Russians reject liberal conceptions of human rights and civil liberties, they strongly favor state economic guarantees or “social rights” (at least in part due to the legacy of Soviet-era welfare provisions and security), and they are comfortable with heavy state 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 rights using survey data from 2001. They identified three distinct dimensions of rights, which they labelled economic, political, and civil.…”

“…Early in the Putin era, public support for economic and personal-integrity rights was robust (Gerber and Mendelson 2002). In 2001, from 62 percent (for freedom from arbitrary arrest) to 89 percent (right of a minimum standard of living) were strong supporters, with most figures for these rights above 70 percent.…”

Locating Women's Human Rights in Post-Soviet Provincial Russia

“…However, this research has tended to focus on examples of particular human rights violations (Weiler 2004), or on citizens' lack of engagement with human rights (Gerber & Mendelson 2002). This research also reveals that assumptions made after 'private sphere' that were mainly perpetrated by individuals and it was argued that these disproportionately impacted on women due to their positioning in private spaces.…”