Authors

Liu Peng¹;  ¹ University of Minnesota, United States

Discussion

The industrialisation project under the Soviet Union has created uneven distribution of resources across its vast territory, with cities carrying key industries receiving more and direct resources from Moscow. The array of ideals exemplified by being a Soviet citizen is also more likely to take root in such localities. I argue that residents of critical industrial cities with special status in former USSR demonstrate unique patterns in a certain set of contemporary political attitudes caused by the very arrangement. Combining historical evidence and geo-coded survey data in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, I show that the long-term effects exerted by the Soviet industrialisation are discernible after decades of the Soviet collapse. One’s proximity to Soviet-era factories is associated with her attitudes towards democracy, trust in government and political activism. Process tracing of two cases is conducted to indicate the causal mechanisms behind the association.