A majority of respondents agreed with the following statement: “Over the seventy-five years of the Soviet regime our people have become different from people of the West, and it is too late to change that.” A slightly larger majority agreed with the statement “Sooner or later Russia will follow the path that is common for all civilized countries.” Most people agreed with both statements at the same time, and the fact that they did seemed to affirm the former and make the latter seem vanishingly unlikely.
