The Soviet Past Theme in the 2021 Duma Campaign

Abstract

The article is devoted to the theme of the Soviet past in the 2021 Duma elections. The author shows that, in comparison with 2016, the relevance of this topic has not decreased, but has in fact increased. While in the previous Duma elections the confrontations on the issues of the Soviet past dissolved into broader cleavages, this time they manifested themselves very clearly. The author documents the change in the structure of the confrontations on the issues of the Soviet past. If a year earlier such confrontations ran along the lines of “Communists vs. Anti-Communists” and “Liberals vs. Statists”, in 2021 they rather went along the lines of “Defenders of the Soviet period vs. its Critics” and “Reds vs. Whites”, with communists surpassing liberals and assuming the leading role in such confrontations. The author explains this shift by the growing importance of the topic of the Soviet past in the interparty discussion, because it is the communists who are its main promoters and beneficiaries. The article reveals that the confrontation “Defenders of the Soviet period vs. its Critics” quite convincingly explains the second electoral cleavage. In one of the models, it even displaces the general confrontation between liberals and conservatives in the worldview issues. The use of an alternative methodology based on a double factor analysis allowed the author to detect the opposition “Communists vs. Liberals”, as well as an additional one associated with the special position of the Liberal Democratic Party on the issues of the Soviet past. These confrontations colored a number of electoral cleavages, including some of those that otherwise would be impossible to interpret politically. The author interprets an increase in the importance of the Soviet past in the mass consciousness as the evidence that the process of “Left vs. Right” confrontation shifting from the socio-economic area to the socio-cultural one, which is typical for the European and North American democracies, has partially affected Russia.