Our Neighbors: A View From Russia. Perceptions Of The Former Soviet Republics Among Citizens Of Russia. Materials From A Moscow University Round Table

Abstract

In May 2017 a research project on Russian citizens’ perceptions of the former Soviet republics was presented at a round table held by the Department of Sociology and Psychology of Politics of the Faculty of Political Science of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The three main topics of discussion were: problems of perception of the states of the post-Soviet space; comparative analysis of the images of these countries; and factors that infl uence the formation of images of states in the mass political consciousness. As the discussion showed, the perception of other countries refl ects, fi rst of all, the psychological state of one’s own society: as the positive assessments of one’s own country grow, the assessments of other countries become more positive as well. The study showed a very low awareness of neighboring countries among the respondents. Maximum emotional response among them was elicited by Ukraine and Belarus. Further, in the images of all the post-Soviet countries, a marked contradiction between the positive assessments of the peoples and the negative assessments of the authorities of these countries was observed.

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