Kelsey Simons and Dr. Tony Brown, Department of German and Slavic Languages

In matters of international politics today, Russia is the wildcard. Its history of power on the international stage, along with an impressive military and large sphere of influence give it a commanding presence, even as it still struggles to find its identity after a swift political and economic change following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is increasingly important to pay attention to Russia, and therefore it is equally important to know the standing the US has in that country. There is no doubt that the US has had a major impact on Russia in the last twenty years. But how do the Russians feel about this American influence? Their feelings toward the United States can and does affect the way that their government interacts with ours and other Western countries on the international stage.

In the summer of 1998, a BYU graduate student named Dave Waddell conducted a survey in three Russian cities – Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan, in which he asked Russian citizens over the age of forty to answer questions about their views of the US. By focusing on Russians who were forty years or older, he addressed a group who had grown up in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but had witnessed for themselves the decay and disintegration of their own government. My research was a continuation of Dave Waddell’s work. In these last fifteen years both the US and Russia have altered and redefined their roles in international politics. After the events of 9/11 the US increased its involvement on the world stage even more, trying to assert itself as the main power in a unipolar world. Russia’s leadership has fallen into the hands of President Vladimir Putin; who, while stabilizing the economy and rebuilding Russia as a main world power, has done so by slowly putting Russian democratic processes in his authoritarian stranglehold. Given these developments, I was curious to see how Russians today view the US and their place in the world stage as opposed to the previous survey.

Instead of giving surveys to people who are forty years or older, I chose to survey college-age students in Russia. The reasoning for this was to work with a completely different generation of Russians, one that has not experienced the Soviet Union or the Cold War at all. The average age of the students I surveyed was seventeen. They were born just as the Soviet Union fell, so the events of the Cold War are a thing of history to them. Surveying a generation so far removed from the generation previously surveyed gives a much more stark contrast to work with. It also gives a more clear understanding of where the country is heading today. The students today will be Russia’s leaders in a few years. Their views and attitudes towards the rest of the world will affect how Russia decides to act in the future.

The original plan for this project was to conduct a survey at three different universities- one in Moscow, one in Kazan, and one in St. Petersburg. This was decided under the impression that my study abroad would be in Moscow. However, the program location changed to a university in Nizhniy Novgorod, a city situated between Moscow and Kazan. When this change occurred, my mentor Dr. Brown and I decided to omit Kazan in favor of conducting the survey in Nizhniy, where I was already present. One of my professors at the Higher School of Economics gave the surveys out for me, but instead of reaching 100 students, she was only able to find 48. We had also not taken into consideration the Russian school year, which finished in June, just as I was trying to send the survey to Moscow and St. Petersburg. When I visited St. Petersburg with the intention of picking up the completed surveys, the teacher who was supposed to return them to me could not be reached, and the surveys were not completed. This was a major disappointment. In the end, the only completed surveys I was able to collect were the 48 in Nizhniy Novgorod at the Higher School of Economics. As such, it must be understood that while there are distinct patterns found in the survey results, they were from a small, isolated group without as much breadth as I had originally hoped. Should this project be repeated in the future, extra efforts should be made to find a larger pool of students.

With the limited number of answers received in mind, here are the main conclusions I gathered from this research. When I asked students about their thoughts on nuclear war, about half of those surveyed believed that they would experience nuclear war in their lifetime, though in the summer of 2012 most believed that it wouldn’t happen in the near future. The clear majority also believed that the United States would start such a war, just like the participants in 1998 believed. When asked if they believed that their political leaders could protect them should such a war occur, most respondents did not have very much faith in their leaders. This has changed completely from 1998, when 60% of those surveyed trusted their leaders to protect them in war.

The 2012 participants were asked to rate the United States and Russia on a scale from “very weak” to “very powerful” as far as their influence in the world. The large majority rated Russia as “somewhat powerful”, while the United States was “very powerful”. When asked what the best indication of state power was, over 50% said economy, and the next highest percentile answered political leaders. This is in direct contrast to the 1998 survey, where about 60% of those surveyed said that USSR was most powerful, and about 40% said America was most powerful. Of those who answered that the US was more powerful in 1998, most said that it was because of geography – the US is more isolated from the rest of the world, and economy was barely brought up at all.

The students in 2012 were also asked to rate certain timely issues in matter of importance. Unsurprisingly, the students were in the middle about the EU and the Middle East, and the Russian presidential elections were more important than the US elections. However, the war in Afghanistan was more important to them than even the Russian presidential elections. While the reasoning for this could be that the previous questions in the survey were about the war in Afghanistan, and the participants were already thinking about that, it does show that they are aware of the US’s actions and have opinions on what the US does in the world.

In all, the students in Russia today are neither wholly for nor against the United States. They acknowledge the US’s power, but they do not agree with everything we do. The prejudice many have observed against the West in Russia is very real, but so is the admiration and desire to imitate Western powers. With Russia so divided today, it is hard to predict how they will act in the future. However, there is a clear trend in our favor since the 1998 surveys. The older generation was still very much for Russia and the USSR, while today more of the younger generation have begun to embrace relations with the West.