According to the results of the 1999 survey, Russians were ever more nostalgic. “Would you prefer that things return to the way they were before 1985?”—before perestroika—drew a clear majority of respondents who agreed: 58 percent, up from 44 in 1994. The proportion of people who viewed the changes of the early 1990s as positive continued to shrink, while the percentage of those who said they could not cope with the changes grew noticeably. The more distant past became ever more appealing: now 26 percent believed that Stalin’s rule had been good for the country, up from 18 percent in 1994.
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