Popular Attitudes to the Transition to a Market Economy in the Soviet Union on the Eve of Reform

Abstract

This paper surveys a wide range of Soviet opinion poll data, mostly collected between the middle of 1990 and the middle of 1991, to investigate attitudes to the transition to the market economy. The majority of the population welcomed the transition to a market economy as the only means of freeing themselves from an oppressive system, and were willing to pay a high price for their liberation, but they were not willing to exchange one form of exploitation for another.