Lexington Books
Pages: 414
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-4985-1474-3 • Hardback • December 2015 • $154.00 • (£119.00)
978-1-4985-1476-7 • Paperback • April 2017 • $72.99 • (£56.00)
978-1-4985-1475-0 • eBook • December 2015 • $69.00 • (£53.00)
Elena Shestopal is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Psychology at Moscow State University.
Part 1: Political Psychological Analysis of Russians’ Public Mentality: From Theory to Empirical Data
Chapter 1: The Key Role of Perception as a Mechanism of Mass Political Mentality, Elena Shestopal, Audrey Zverev, Natalia Bokova, and Natalia Smulkina
Chapter 2: Methodology of the Study of Various Political Objects, Elena Shestopal, Alena Zatonskih, Irina Moiseeva, and Ivan Palitai
Part 2: Images of Authorities in Russians’ Mentality
Chapter 3: Content of Authorities’ Images, Elena Shestopal, Maxim Zhestkov, Svetlana Akhmatnurova, Ignat Bogdan, Svyatoslav Davydov, Vladislav Markov, Ekaterina Muzyka, Svetlana Nesterova, Gadzhibala Ramaldanov, Natalia Smulkina, and Anastasia Trushcheva
Chapter 4: Psychological Structure of Authorities’ Images, Elena Shestopal, Ignat Bogdan, Natalia Bokova, and Olga Bukreeva
Chapter 5: Images of Authorities in Different Social Groups, Elena Shestopal, Ekaterina Muzyka, Anna Rogozar, Lira Gazizova, and Maria Suslina
Part 3: Images of Political Institutions
Chapter 6: Image of the Contemporary Russian State, Elena Shestopal and Philip Perzh
Chapter 7: Image of Russia’s Parliament, Elena Shestopal and Irina Moiseeva
Chapter 8: Images of Russia’s Political Parties, Elena Shestopal, Ivan Palitai, and Alena Zatonskih
Part 4: Images of Russian Leaders
Chapter 9: Certain Psychological Features of Perception of Russian Leaders, Elena Shestopal
Chapter 10: Presidents as Leaders, Elena Shestopal and Natalia Smulkina
Chapter 11: Images of Executive Branch Leaders, Elena Shestopal, Anastasia Trushcheva, and Vladislav Markov
Chapter 12: Leaders of Opposition: Images of A. Navalny, M. Prokhorov, M. Khodorkovsky, A. Kudrin, Elena Shestopal and Svyatoslav Davydov
Chapter 13: Regional Leaders: Governors, Elena Shestopal and Elena Yakovleva
Chapter 14: Political Leaders of Russia’s Parliament, Elena Shestopal and Irina Moiseeva
Postscript: 2014: The End of the Time of Troubles?, Elena Shestopal
Shestopal joins a number of fellow Russian scholars who have been studying Russian political mentality since 1993. The volume's coverage focuses on the period 2011–14. The book offers insight into how Russians perceive the contemporary Russian state, Russia's parliament, and Russian political parties. The contributors pay significant attention to various Russian leaders and representatives of the opposition. Their analyses of the dynamics of Vladimir Putin's image from 2000 until 2015 is of interest to those who follow his lengthy tenure as the strongman of Russia. The authors also assess those who competed with Putin in the 2012 presidential elections in Russia, such as Gennady Zyuganov, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Mikhail Prokhorov, and Sergey Mironov. Other topics covered include images of regional leaders and political leaders of the country's parliament. Shestopal and her colleagues help in understanding the connections between state and society in Russia. Overall, a useful addition to the literature on modern Russia. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — Choice Reviews
The strength of this book is found in those sections in which she engages in qualitative research.— VoegelinView
The arrival of the book New Trends in Russian Political Mentality edited by Elena Shestopal is an important event for the study of contemporary Russian politics and society. This essential volume authored by Russia’s leading sociologists focuses on the particularities of public opinion, political thought, and ideology in Russia during the Putin era. . . The discussion provides important foundations for interpreting the political situation in contemporary Russia for political scientists and public opinion makers in the west. . . . this book is essential reading for all interested audiences, including advanced students of Russia, policy makers, and public opinion shapers. It is a contribution that provides a refined and politically-nuanced picture of Russian society based on sophisticated theoretical analysis and elaborate sociological research.
— Slavic Review
Even after two decades at the pinnacle of Russian public life, Vladimir Putin remains an enigma. This collection of impressive studies is an important contribution to unravelling the mystery. Building on powerful previous studies, Elena Shestopal and her fellow scholars trace the recent changes in public perceptions of Putin and the Russian elite as a whole. Both the power system and Putin have entered perilous new waters. Although Russian society today is more consolidated than before and there is a sense that the earlier ‘time of troubles’ of the 1990s is over, relations between Russia’s leaders and societies remain fraught. This book provides a psychological portrait of state and society at this time of change, providing a powerful, original, perceptive, and convincing analysis of state-society relations in contemporary Russia.— Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent
As the clouds of a renewed Cold War seem to be gathering, this book is a welcome contribution from the very active political psychology research program at Moscow State University. Focusing on how people in Russia sense and implicitly represent political realities, the book uses the concept of ‘image’ to chart Russians’ perceptions of power and authority, leaders and opposition, and institutions, and shows how these perceptions have changed over the years of Putin’s presidencies. One very important message is that today’s Russians aren’t the same as Soviets. Americans ignore this difference at their own peril, and so one hopes this book will influence academic and policymaking circles as well as concerned citizens who want to understand the evolving Russia-U.S. relationship.— David G. Winter, University of Michigan
Quite remarkable in its analytical depth and presentation of vast sociological evidence, this book offers unique insight on Russian people’s opinions of their leaders, their institutions, and the Kremlin’s policies. It is almost indispensable reading to understanding Russia’s behavior domestically and internationally. Edited by Elena B. Shestopal, the key scholar on Russian political psychology, this book has no match in the existing literature in providing rich empirical evidence of how society is changing from essentially materialistic to post-materialistic values, where ‘justice and safety’ trump material expectations and demands from politicians. I hope that all those who seek to understand modern Russia will read this book and thereby avoid the simplifications and clichés prevalent in many ‘western’ approaches to Russia.— Piotr Dutkiewicz, Carleton University
• Winner, Russian Association for Political Science (RAPN) Book Prize "The integration into the world science" - Diploma of 1st Degree