Vl. Hamilton et al., ORIENTATIONS TOWARD AUTHORITY IN AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE - MOSCOW IN 1990, Personality & social psychology bulletin, 21(4), 1995, pp. 356-365
Little is known about citizens' orientations to authority in authorita
rian regimes. A 1990 Moscow survey offered an unusual opportunity to e
xamine socialist citizens' views of military crimes of obedience, thei
r attitudes toward political dissent, and predictors of each. In fact,
there was no relationship between respondents' attitudes about disobe
dience (whether they would refuse orders to carry out military war cri
mes) and their responses about political dissent. However, greater edu
cation was associated both with claiming that one would disobey and wi
th engaging in dissent. Exploratory analyses of additional attitude qu
estions revealed two orthogonal factors-socialist conservatism and pol
itical powerlessness-which account for some of the effect of education
and help explain the role of Communist Party membership. Party member
s felt more politically efficacious, but nonmembers were more likely t
o protest.