The Soviet past and party competition: using quantitative methods

The article analyses the place of the Soviet past issues in the interparty discussion in contemporary Russia. The methodology of the study is based on the cleavage theory and the issue dimensions theory which consider confrontation as the engine of the political life. The lists of issues and most active participants are formed on the base of issue salience and issue ownership criteria. Factor analysis of party positions on these issues revealed two divisions: ‘Communists vs Anticommunists’ and ‘Liberals vs Statists’. Factor loadings of these divisions are compared with parties' factor loadings in political dimensions on a wider range of issues: three main ones (systemic, authoritarian-democratic, socioeconomic) and seven additional – in three issues domains: domestic policy, social and economic policy, systemic domain (international relations + worldviews). It is detected that the ‘Communists vs Anticommunists’ division correlates well with the main socioeconomic dimension and its subtype ‘Communists vs Liberals’, but most strongly – with a sub-dimension ‘Soviet traditionalists vs Progressives’ from the systemic domain. The ‘Liberals vs Statists’ division appeared to correlate closely with the main authoritarian-democratic dimension, but much more – with the subtype ‘Liberals vs Loyalists’ from the domestic policy issue domain. It is concluded that the divisions on the issues of the Soviet past easily fit into the picture of political dimensions and even get lost in it. Comparison of divisions over the Soviet past with electoral cleavages shows that these issues are not very important for the mass mind. High correlation coefficients are devalued by high p-levels, indicating that there is a typical “third factor” effect in the case.