An examination of the relationship between cultural distance and acculturation preferences in six post-Soviet societies

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between perceived cultural distance and acculturation preferences of ethnic majority groups and a minority group in six post-Soviet societies: Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. We surveyed ethnic Russians (the ethnic minority) and members of the majority groups in each society. The total number of respondents was 3271 people. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the status of the Russian population in these republics changed from being the dominant group in the Soviet Union to an ethnic minority group in the newly independent countries. To take into account contextual features, we evaluated the permeability of ethnic boundaries for ethnic Russians, which vary across different post-Soviet republics. We found that in the samples of the national population and one ethnic minority (Russians), the closer the cultural distance, the higher the perceived permeability of boundaries. However, among the national population, a closer cultural distance to Russians is positively associated with the desire to segregate them, while among Russians, a closer cultural distance to the national population is associated with a desire to integrate.