Value Adaptation to the Imposition and Collapse of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe

Does the political system in a country influence the importance that its citizens ascribe to the broad range of basic human values? Surprisingly, there is little direct evidence that this is the case. We address this question through a comparative, crossnational study. For this purpose, we take advantage of the natural experiment in Central and Eastern Europe constituted by the imposition of communist regimes over 40 years and their subsequent collapse. We seek to identify if and how the experience of living under communist regimes affected the basic values of citizens in East and Central European countries. (For convenience we refer to this region collectively as East Europe).