There are also large cross-national differences on how people view the current state of democracy in their country. One factor driving dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working is frustration with political elites, who are often perceived as out of touch with average citizens. In former Eastern Bloc nations, there is a widespread perception that politicians — and to a somewhat lesser extent, business people — have benefited greatly from the changes that have taken place since the end of the communist era.
The belief that ordinary people have benefited is much less common, although the share of the public expressing this view has increased in many countries since Another sign of frustration with political elites and institutions is the poor ratings for most European political parties.
The survey asked respondents whether they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of major parties in their country. In total, we asked about 59 parties across the 14 EU nations surveyed — but only six of these parties receive a favorable rating from half or more of the public. Despite the misgivings many have about the way democracy is working, most still believe they can have an influence on the direction of their country.
One of the most significant political developments of the past three decades has been the integration of many Central and Eastern European nations into the European Union. Of course, another major development in recent years has been the rise of populist political parties and movements throughout Europe that have questioned the value of European integration and railed against Brussels on a variety of fronts. The United Kingdom has gone so far as to vote to leave the EU.
Overall, attitudes toward the EU are positive. Roughly half or more in every member state surveyed express a favorable opinion of the institution. In contrast, only half or fewer believe membership has been good in Italy, the UK and the Czech Republic. Publics are somewhat more lukewarm about the economic impact of EU membership. Overall, views about the general impact of EU membership, and the specific economic impact of membership, have improved in recent years as economic concerns have eased somewhat in many nations.
The improvement in several of the Central and Eastern European countries that have joined the EU is dramatic. However, improvements are not limited to the former Eastern Bloc. Even though their countries have experienced economic challenges in recent years, people in France and Spain are much more positive about their lives than they were almost three decades ago.
Overall, life satisfaction tends to be higher in wealthier nations. The four countries with the highest per capita incomes in this study — the U. When thinking about the future of their countries, Europeans express a mixture of optimism and pessimism. Regarding the economic prospects for the next generation, hope is more common in Central and Eastern Europe.
Around six-in-ten Ukrainians, Poles and Slovaks believe that when children in their country grow up, they will be financially better off than their parents. When asked how they feel about the future of different topics in their countries, opinions vary widely across issues.
However, there is considerably less optimism about the future regarding well-paying jobs and the way the political system works. On a host of issues, young people have a relatively positive outlook about the past, present and future of their countries. In former communist nations, to year-olds are generally more likely than their older counterparts to believe the shift to a market economy has been good for their country, and they are also more likely to think the changes that have taken place over the past three decades have benefited ordinary people.
Across many European countries, those under 35 are more satisfied with the current direction of their countries. They also express more favorable opinions of the EU, more positive attitudes toward Muslims and are more accepting of homosexuality. And there is greater optimism about the long-term economic future among young people. In 12 nations, those ages 18 to 34 are more likely than those 60 and older to believe that children in their country will be better off financially than their parents when they grow up.
Although Europeans tend to place a high priority on having gender equality in their countries, in several nations women are more likely than men to hold this view. The state would pass through a phase, often thought of as a socialism, and eventually settle finally on a pure communist society.
In a communist society, all private ownership would be abolished, and the means of production would belong to the entire community.
In the communist movement, a popular slogan stated that everyone gave according to their abilities and received according to their needs. Thus, the needs of a society would be put above and beyond the specific needs of an individual. In the late 19th century, communist philosophy began to develop in Russia. The new poll also finds Western Europeans in a number of cases are at least as hostile toward minorities as are Eastern Europeans.
In particular, many in the West, especially in Italy and Spain, hold unfavorable views of Muslims. Concern about Russia is another sentiment shared by both Eastern and Western Europeans. As for the Russians themselves, there has been an upsurge in nationalist sentiment since the early s. While the current polling finds a broad endorsement for the demise of communism, reactions vary widely among and within countries.
In east Germany and the Czech Republic, there is considerable support for the shift to both a multiparty system and a free market economy. The Poles and Slovaks rank next in terms of acceptance. In contrast, somewhat fewer Hungarians, Bulgarians, Russians and Lithuanians say they favor the changes to the political and economic systems they have experienced, although majorities or pluralities endorse the changes.
Ukraine is the only country included in the survey where more disapprove than approve of the changes to a multiparty system and market economy. And even more than other publics included in the survey, Hungarians are frustrated by the gap between what they want from democracy — such as a free press, free speech and competitive elections — and what they believe they currently have. Across virtually all of these former communist countries, with the notable exception of the former East Germany, the patterns of acceptance of political and economic changes mirror what was evident from the very start of the political and economic upheavals of two decades ago.
Younger, better educated and urban people tend to be more accepting of changes and register greater gains in life satisfaction than do older people, the less well educated and those living in rural areas. In Russia, for example, majorities of those younger than 50 years of age approve of the changes to a multiparty system and a free market system. Similar disparities in acceptance are evident by education in Russia and among most of the other former communist publics surveyed.
That is not the case, however, in the former East Germany, where both older and younger people — as well as the better educated and less educated — overwhelmingly endorse the political and economic changes they have experienced. And while about as many east Germans say their former country was overwhelmed and taken by West Germany as said this in , an increasing proportion of east Germans say that reunification has improved their lives.
Moreover, about eight-in-ten of those living in the former East Germany say they favor the unification of Germany. Those in the former West Germany are equally accepting of unification. Opinions among east Germans about the impact of unification on their lives are consistent with one of the most striking trends observed in the new survey. People in former communist countries now rate their lives markedly higher than they did in , when they were still coming to grips with the massive changes then taking place.
This is true even in countries where overall levels of satisfaction with life — as well as positive assessments of political and economic changes — are significantly lower than in the most upbeat of the nations surveyed. Czechs, Poles, Slovaks and east Germans report the most satisfaction with their lives and posted the greatest gains over the past two decades. Russians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians also judge their personal well-being much better than they once did, and they view their lives more positively than do Hungarians and Bulgarians.
However, even those two downbeat publics show improvements in self-assessments of life compared with While the current survey finds people in former communist countries feeling better about their lives than they did in , the increases in personal progress have been uneven demographically, as has been acceptance of economic and political change.
There are now wide age gaps in reports of life satisfaction. These gaps were not evident in , when all age groups expressed comparably negative views of their lives. The same pattern is evident among all of the former communist publics surveyed.
An urban-rural gap also is evident in life satisfaction in two principal republics of the former Soviet Union included in the poll — Russia and Ukraine — as well as in Bulgaria and Hungary. To attack them is to attack the revolution. The Communist ideology is one that is clearly widespread among the masses, and because of this its not only the most viable form of government for China but also the most productive.
While China had a massive revolution from the bottom up, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union came to power without the masses.
The way the Communist Party of the Soviet Union took power was far less emotional than the way the Chinese did. To begin with the people that were against the Tsarist Empire were largely upper class educated citizens, which were bred in the Russian institutions of higher learning in the s.
The Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, which was a creation of Lenin, turned into the Communist Party, and essentially never changed. Without them the Party could arguably never have come to power. Tsarist Russia had no need for a Communist Party, simply because the masses had more rights than they did in the Soviet Union.
In fact. While the Soviets did not have an effective way of establishing national identity in the Soviet Union, the Chinese used their inclusive mindset and Confucius ideology to create a national identity everyone could relate to. While there were many ethnicities in China ranging form the incorporations of the Tibetans, Mongols, and Uyghurs in the 17 th century, the Chinese government was able to keep all of these ethnicities under one ideology, namely Confucianism. However, in contemporary times the PRC states that China is a multi-ethnic state.
In the Soviet Union on the other hand, there were far too many ethnic minorities in the state. What the Soviet Union attempted to achieve was a classless national identity by limiting everybody to one class, the Proletariats. Rather than recognizing that there were many ethnicities, like China did, the Soviet Union rejected the ethnicities and instead.
Ronald Grigor Suny offers a good definition stating that a nation is. According to this definition, the Soviet Union did not possess any kind of unity, because within the ethnic minorities and Soviet blocs, different languages were spoken, a different history applied for each state, and cultures varied between each ethnicity.
As Karl Marx clearly stated, Communism would not be achieved unless there would be an international revolution of the Proletariat class. Nationalism was a key component used by the CPC that was the glue in sticking the people to the party.
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