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Близкие духом: динамика ценностей в Беларуси и соседних странах, 1990-2012
Values are long-term orientation goals that guide behaviour and change gradually over the life course. Belarus, like its neighbouring countries, has lived through post-communist transformations that entailed deep value change that many believed to be linked with modernization. This paper applies R. Inglehart’s revised theory of modernization in the comparative analysis of preferences for social development and values in upbringing over the 1990-2012 survey data of the WVS and EVS. Belarus is compared to Russia and Kazakhstan, the Eurasian neighbours, on the one hand, and with Poland and Ukraine, eastern European neighbours, on the other. Results demonstrate that in many respects the preferred values of social development and upbringing have shown similar trends over two decades, with the priority of materialist needs in social development but also rising importance of independence and responsibility as children’s qualities. At the same time, Belarus’s position between the countries compared is too ambivalent to conclude that it is closer in values either to one or the other neighbourhood at the moment.