ROUGHLY THE SAME PROPORTION OF THE 400 elite respondents to a survey commissioned by the Media and Opinion Research department of the RFE/RL Research Institute and conducted in late 1994 believe that their country is moving in the right direction as believe that it is moving in the wrong direction. The survey suggested that the current Russian elite is composed of two very different types of people who differ strongly on the state of their country's sociopolitical and economic affairs. The implications of these differences become clear when the two groups are analyzed against the backdrop of a wide range of attitudes and opinions. While numerous complex and interrelated beliefs account for these divergent opinions, respondents' attitudes toward economic reforms seem to indicate their overall estimation of Russia's post-Soviet progress.

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