The problem of toleration today is connected in Western countries mainly with the problems of racial prejudice, gender and sexuality, and religion (Mendus 1989: 1) But distinguishing toleration as the group's willingness to treat everybody according to general criteria such as law, but not according to this group's likes and dislikes, it appears obvious that in the Soviet Union today the most crucial issue is that of political toleration.
There are some peculiarities in different regions of the USSR: for instance, speaking about the Ukraine it is necessary to mention that problems of political discord are deepened by the problems of religious intolerance. Last year, President Gorbachev visited Pope John Paul. As the result of this visit the restrictions on the Ukrainian Uniate Catholic Church, which was banned by Stalin, were lifted. However, the Uniate Catholics (something near 6 million out of the total population of the republic of over 52 million) are mainly people living in the Western Ukraine. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are Russian Orthodox.
However there is another church - the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. This was forcibly amalgamated with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1686 but was allowed a brief revival in the 1920s, when the new communist authorities used it to divide the Russian Orthodox Church. At the end of the spring, 1990, as the Russian Church was electing its new patriarch, the Ukrainian Church held its sobor, or synod, in the Ukraine to elect Metropolitan Mstislav, the Church's head in the United States, as its Ukrainian patriarch. Mstislav was refused a visa to attend. This heralds a twofold conflict: an intra-Ukrainian conflict between the two national churches as each vies for control of buildings and congregations; and conflict between Kiev and the Moscow Patriarchate, with Moscow fearing that Kiev, the historic centre of Russian Christianity, could regain its following among Orthodox believers everywhere. While many Ukrainians are not averse to another Ukrainian-Russian battle, they are worried by the prospect of one between the two Ukrainian Churches.
The modern religious situation in the Ukraine is strongly linked with the history of tolerance, the subject of my research. In fact the history of toleration as a phenomenon is the story of the battle against religious intolerance and persecution. From this story emerge many important theoretical points about the nature of toleration. But it is also interesting to examine the history of the subject keeping in mind that tolerance refers not only to toleration of radical extremes and minorities, but also to toleration of majorities, and of official and public opinion. Obviously there are various conditions for tolerance to exist: it can be discussed only in within the context of a democratic society, in which people as individuals and as the members of political and social organisations are really involved in the process of creating and changing current policy. In an authoritarian system the people do not tolerate \*- they suffer established policies (Marcuse 1968: 92). The difference between sufferance and tolerance, and the transition from the one to the other, seems worthy of closer attention.
It is clear historically that the earliest and initially most important area of argument for toleration has been religion. The argument for religious toleration appears originally and minimally as an argument for the end of religious persecution and forced conversion. An obvious historical example is the intolerance of Jews among Christians: Jews were seen as the original enemies of Christ. Because they were said to have procured his crucifixion, his blood was upon their hands and upon the hands of their children. So they were a permanent object of persecution. In sixteenth century Europe, demands increased for the formal segregation of Jews, the burning of synagogues and the compulsory wearing of distinctive badges of humiliation. As one historian defined it, in Europe "the sixteenth century became the century of the ghetto" (Bossy 1985: 86).
But it is also obvious that some examples of toleration existed even within a master-slave relationship. Toleration makes it possible for people to live together in culturally different groups. So, the rise of toleration in human society is closely connected with the necessity for diverse groups to find some way of solving problems. Large empires ruling over diverse ethnic groups have used a great deal of such practical toleration as a tool of government. But neither in ancient Roman nor in the Ottoman Empire, where a diversity of ethnic groups was to a great extent allowed to survive, was toleration more than a device.
One can find arguments for toleration in the works of ancient philosophers. Key elements of later understanding of toleration were recognised in Plato's Apologia. The most important point is connected with Socrates's speech, in which he expresses doubts about the human capacity to know the final truth and to possess wisdom. Some kind of early pragmatic development of the idea of toleration can also be found in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. In this work toleration is discussed using exactly this term. The idea of toleration in Aquinas's work emerges from his thought, that it is not necessary for a true Christian believer to be a fanatic in all circumstances. He says that if tolerance can be good in some cases for the true faith, so it can be used as a temporary action or plan that achieves particular purposes. In sum, toleration was treated at best as a strategy, but not as a `good' in itself.
The idea of toleration as a virtue appeared first in the sixteenth century due to debates between Christians who wanted to persecute heretics and those who argued for tolerating them. There was no question about the fact that heretics were wrong. These debates are considered to be the root of all modern western conceptions of toleration (Vogt 1990: 5). As mentioned above, toleration was treated mainly as an expedient: its practice was limited, and the goal was the solution of the particular problem. For a long time toleration was (and also sometimes is now) a means. So the literature dealing with toleration was concerned generally with means, not with ends. However, among questions which were posed at that time, were questions such as: could preaching and teaching save more lost souls than torture and exemplary execution?
To teach, not to persecute \*- this point of view may be considered as a middle stage between the `active' intolerance and the beginning of real toleration.
The best known example of the literature on toleration in the seventeenth century is John Locke's Latin Epistola de Tolerantia, written in November 1685, but published only in 1689. According to Cranston "unlike John Stuart Mill, and indeed, unlike Voltaire, writing his Traite sur la tolerance in 1762, Locke himself was a man with deep religious sentiments of his own...He had to present to Christian readers a Christian case for religious toleration" (Cranston in On Toleration 1987: 105). But his ideas were not shared by everyone and it was also possible in the seventeenth century to be proud of being intolerant, given that religious faith was virtually universal. The repression of Huguenots in France in 1685 was cruel and barbarous.
Locke did not name France in his work. But it was not necessary to do so. Everybody knew at that time what had happened and public attitudes were very strict ones. Although in his early memoranda, prepared in 1667 for the Whig leader, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke proposed to exclude Catholics from toleration (as they were in Britain for more than a century after the Act of Toleration of 1689), in the Epistola de Tolerantia Roman Catholics were not, by name, excluded from toleration, but the limits to toleration put by Locke were later voked to refuse toleration to Roman Catholics. In Epistola de Tolerantia' describing the radical distinction between the Church and the State, he maintained the idea that magistrates should tolerate all religious societies or Churches, that men choose to form among themselves. It is interesting to note that Locke refused to admit to being the author of Epistola de Tolerantia. The translation of it from Latin to English was done according to Locke `without my privity' (quoted in Cranston 1987: 110).
Locke's idea of toleration was not restricted to considerations of religion. Take for instance his thoughts about `naturalisation'. They were connected with the problem of Huguenot refugees from France. But toleration also was treated as a tool: his arguments were mainly economic ones. (According to Cranston, he needed these arguments, not because of his belief in them as the only reason, but because of his desire to find some arguments against people's hostility, to perusade them to tolerate refugees.) So it would not be accurate to think about Locke's idea as a commitment to pragmatism. It is better to speak in this case about ethical rationalism. There is not enough space to speak about all Locke's ideas including his three letters for `toleration' in this paper, but it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the seventeenth century philosopher's famous and eloquent contribution to the subject.
While in the thoughts of many eighteenth-century philosophers toleration became a `reforming slogan', it still remained dangerous to advocate it. But some authors (especially those influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions) at the same time treated toleration as inadequate. For instance, Mirabeau said: "the word tolerance...seems to me, in some respects, tyrannical in itself, since the authority who tolerates could [also] not tolerate" (quoted in King 1976: 8).
The connection between toleration and rights (and law) was always an important issue. The question was (and still is): what range of non-acceptable things should be tolerated? The shift in the answers given was tremendous: from the strictly limited number of tolerated things in the sixteenth century (as few as possible) to a large number of things permitted in the nineteenth century (as many as possible).
I shall turn now to Mill's idea of toleration. Mill claimed that no-one is entitled to suppress an action or opinion simply because they believe it to be morally wrong. Mill believed that the road to truth is the road of toleration and argued for freedom of opinion and discussion. These were arguments for toleration and not indifference. "Tolerance of the free expression of the opinions of others arises not from indifference or a belief that opinions are harmless or from a careless agnosticism, but from being persuaded of the decisive force of considerations that override the spontaneous impulse to the suppression of opinions which we feel to be wrong and pernicious" (Edwards in Justifying Toleration 1988: 90).
It can be said, that Mill had a twofold view on toleration: one of an instrumental character (toleration as a prudent strategy toward the desired end \*- truth), and a second \*- connected with the opening motto to his On liberty (1859), taken from von Humbolt's work: "... the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity". Mill's anticipation of the eventual `consolidation of opinion' would seem to be ominous for the future of human diversity in all its forms. If this really is the heart of Mill's doctrine of toleration, "he is a tragic figure indeed" (Edwards 1988: 94). Solutions to this contradiction have been proposed by many authors. Feyerabend, for example, supposed, that Mill's point of view was the following : "whatever the importance of the search for truth, it should never outrank the interests of the individual".
Mill's arguments of toleration can be described as utilitarian in character. But this `utility' must be "utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being" (Mill 1972: 74). He said that if all things now considered as `good' were at their beginning `originality', so we need at least to be (even if we have no such desire) tolerant towards originality.
Mill's four grounds for the concept of the complete toleration of opinions were summarised in the chapter on the liberty of thought and discussion. They were given in abridged form by Edwards (1988: 100) in this way:
These arguments are closely connected with the idea of intellectual development. The social conditions which enable this development are those in which complete toleration of thought and discussion is favoured.
Popper suggests in Toleration and Intellectual Responsibility three principles of toleration which are associated with Mill's four grounds: firstly \*- `I may be wrong and you may be right'; secondly \*- `by talking things over rationally we may be able to correct some of our mistakes'; thirdly \*- `we may get nearer to the truth even we if do not reach agreement'. And later he writes: "If I dream of a democratic Utopia, it will be one in which a parliamentary candidate can hope to attract votes by the boast that he discovered during the last year thirty-one mistakes made by himself and has managed to correct thirteen of them; while his competitor discovered only twenty-seven, even though he admittedly also corrected thirteen of them, I need not say that this will be a Utopia of toleration" (Popper 1987: 34).
The more authors dealing with toleration \*- the wider the range of views. In Toleration as a Moral Ideal Nicholson argues that "toleration is not a second-best, a necessary evil, a putting-up with what we have to for the sake of peace and quiet, but a positive good, a virtue distinctive of the best people and societies" (1985: 166). "I am not sure about this; I am inclined to think that toleration is a second-best, but a second-best to be cherished in an imperfect world", so Cranston answers in an article which emerged from the same research programme (Cranston 1987: 102).
Moreover, Marcuse, according to his idea of `repressive tolerance' speaking about the struggle for a real democracy, says "part of this struggle is the fight against an ideology of tolerance which, in reality, favours and fortifies the conservation of the status quo of inequality and discrimination. For this struggle, I proposed the practice of discriminating tolerance" (Marcuse 1969: 123).
The historical development of the idea of tolerance shows that it was really the development, not direct but very complicated, from sufferance to tolerance as a device, and only then to the development of tolerance as a value. Since it is not possible to cover all the works on toleration I should like to leave this question open and finish this part with Popper's words: "We must learn that self-criticism is best; and mutual criticism, which is always needed, and which we need in order to learn self-criticism, is almost as good" (Popper 1987: 34).
To begin the theoretical problems of toleration I would like to take as an example the definition given by King. Considering toleration as a problem of human relations he suggests that "to tolerate generally means to endure, suffer or put up with a person, activity, idea or organisation of which or whom one does not really approve" (King 1976: 21). And further he says: "Tolerance involves some form of `acceptance' of an item to which we object" (ibid: 24). These statements pose several questions. Firstly, what is the difference, if any, between sufferance and toleration? Secondly, does toleration indeed mean acceptance of things we disapprove of?
First and foremost it is necessary to give some indication of the circumstances which make it possible to speak about toleration. Can it be really possible to speak about toleration toward things/ideas/activities etc. about which nothing can be done except only `to put up' with them? Is `puting up with' really a synonym of `toleration'? The difference between toleration and sufferance is the problem of the availability of power: power to punish, power to persecute. If you can do nothing about the things which you dislike or consider to be immoral and having no right to exist, then you have no alternative but to put up with them. It is a case of sufferance. The greater your desire to forbid or to do something else with these things, the stronger is your sufferance if you have no chance to interfere.
Toleration is a free choice to refrain from forbidding or from punishing the thing a person considers to be wrong. The tolerator must be in a position to influence the behaviour of the tolerated. Thus, in the example of racial toleration, a person may be said to tolerate only in circumstances where, although he is racially prejudiced towards, say, the Asians, and although he has the power, say, to throw people of this race out of the enterprise of which he had suddenly become the head, he nevertheless, refrains from doing so.
Such power does not necessarily mean legal power; it can be illegal or even underground. Mill's `tyranny of opinion' is a good example of such illegal power. Even though, as individuals, we are not legally entitled to persecute groups we do not like, we may still display intolerance towards them by bringing social pressure upon them (e.g. attitudes and actions towards the gay rights organisations).
The second necessary condition of toleration is diversity. The problem of toleration always arises in circumstances of discordance. The discordance of social values means not only the presence of diversity but also the realisation of it.
There are many ties which bind the individual to different economic, religious and other groups. These ties between individuals create the space of the acceptance. Things are rarely black and white. Speaking about the attitudes of any group toward some value one can identify a continuum from strong agreement to strong disagreement. The distribution of the opinions around the value shows the continuum of the group's acceptance of it. If the investigated problem is more complicated, it is necessary to use different tools to check the attitudes of the group's members about the different dimensions of this problem.
So what are the criteria of social acceptability? In what case can we speak about the precise measurement of social toleration? The last question is more important in order to give this paper some kind of logic. On one side is the area of social acceptance \*- things, opinions, etc. which are practised on a large scale, are socially approved of, and are allowed by law. On the other side we have the area of crimes and things which are not allowed by law. And there is something between these two areas: some things which are not practised customarily and considered appropriate, but which are allowed by law. It is important to note here, that it is possible to speak about acceptance only in cases where both criteria \*- legality and social acceptance \*- are present. The presence of a single criterion is insufficient.
The afore-mentioned are the kinds of social phenomena toward which toleration can be measured. It is impossible to speak about toleration toward acceptable things, because by definition acceptable things are not disliked. Unfortunately the objects of measures of toleration in many cases are chosen according to some researcher's traditions or preferences, but not according to empirical investigation of the current composition of the categories of things which are socially approved of and things which are legal. It was necessary to discuss these basic issues in order to define the difference between the psychological study of individual toleration as the quality of allowing other people to have their own attitudes or beliefs etc., and the sociological study of social toleration emerging from the conflict between the interests of different groups, and investigated through the study of things which are legal but not socially accepted (the opposite of King's suggestions).
So the conditions for the emergence of toleration are: discordance or according to Mendus's definition (1989: 81) diversity of ideas, interests and so on; the power to interfere, to influence, to make something in order to eliminate things you dislike. And the crucial point is, of course, the refusal to use such power. All this is, speaking in logical terms, the necessary condition. Whether it is also sufficient is a question to be considered later.
I would like to discuss two approaches to the concept of toleration: toleration as a concept which can properly be applied only to things of which people morally disapprove; and, which it seems to me the more suitable approach) that idea that toleration is or may equally be applied to things which are merely disliked. The former defines toleration narrowly, the latter more widely. To speak about racial toleration with the first approach makes little sense because to be born black/white may be considered a misfortune but it is hardly a moral fault. In discussing the relative merits of the two schools of thought the latter was favoured partly because it conforms better to widespread usage.
Moving from questions about the circumstances and scope of toleration to questions about what it requires of people and what its proper objects are, it is necessary to notice that there are also two points of view in this case. In discussing the requirements of toleration, two opposing positions were referred to: the claim that toleration requires only the leaving of others alone or refraining from persecuting them (the negative interpretation of toleration), and the claim that toleration requires more than that \*- that it requires assisting, aiding and fostering (the positive interpretation of toleration) (Mendus 1989: 16). The last point of view was also supported by Lord Scarman.
Turning to the empirical part of the paper, I should mention that there are some obvious contradictions between the working definition of toleration suggested above, the theoretical ideas on toleration discussed earlier, and the data presented here. Unfortunately the operationalisation of this new working definition of tolerance can become possible only with a separate piece of research with after a preceding investigation of the current patterns of social acceptance. But there are several questions which can be considered now within the framework of the traditional approach.
Without jumping to political conclusions it seems interesting to compare the situation of toleration in the Soviet Union, with its short history of freedom of speech and assembly, and in Great Britain, where such rights were taken for granted over a long historical period. Unfortunately I do not have adequate data for the Soviet Union now, but I expect to have it soon. Some kind of illustration of the state of Soviet people's attitudes a few years ago toward not even toleration, but towards the idea of diversity in youth culture, can, however, be given now: at the end of 1987 nearly 20% of young people in Kiev were asked about their attitudes toward a non-existent self-organised youth group \*- the Tigers. They agreed, that `it is necessary to apply severe sanctions to them'. But it must not be forgotten that there were also twice as many people who agreed with the idea that different groups had similar rights to exist (without applying any measures). But were these views consistent?
Using the term `political toleration' it is necessary to know whether there is some consistency in people's attitudes toward more or less related issues? Do they subscribe to general principles or values which influence their attitudes toward different aspects of political and civil freedom? In another words, are people consistently tolerant or intolerant of things connected with political issues?
So far I have only been able to examine this question with respect to the British data. (International Social Survey Project 1985). Two batteries of questions were picked up from the available data. Unfortunately, data for other questions dealing with the same point were absent from this file. The first series referred to rights of unspecified protestors against the government: should they be allowed to organise `protest meetings' etc. The second series asked about the rights of two types of political dissident (`people who want to overthrow the government by revolution', and `people who believe whites are racially superior to all other races'): should they be allowed to `hold public meetings to express their views'; `teach fifteen year olds in schools'; or `publish books expressing their views'?
Using statistical correlation matrix techniques I tried to determine empirically which issues people put together (both series of questions have the same scales). The first and clearest was that people do indeed `put' these items together. The result can be produced in the form of a diagram (see Figure 1).
It is well-known that majorities endorse the traditional, well behaved, mild-mannered forms of protest. It is quite obvious in this diagram too: the preferred forms of protest are `public meetings to protest against the government' (61.85% \*- `definitely allowed') and publishing pamphlets' (57.6% \*- `definitely allowed'). A second groups of forms of protest (more disapproved of) includes `occupy government office', `organise nationwide strike' and `damage government buildings'. `Protest marches and demonstrations' occupies some kind of middle level form (`definitely allowed'\*- 37.5%). People's answers on questions in both series are closely correlated.
The consistency of attitudes in relation to particular topics is apparent from the data: the agreement with the right of people who want to overthrow the government by revolution to hold public meetings to express their views goes together with the agreement to the same right for racists. The pattern is just the same with their right to publish books and so on.
I shall return to the scheme mentioned above later, but first I want to discuss the intention of people definitely to allow mostly `mild' forms of protest. A cynical remark on this case is that the public favours legal protection of only those `well-mannered' forms of dissidence which really need little protection or none at all.
The problem of `drawing the line' is really one of the crucial points for the concept of toleration. It is under discussion within the problem of the limits of toleration, but here I should like to mention only that the protesters are indeed less acceptable. In cases where there is a touch of illegality, libertarian support drops down (to around 50:50). When possible violence enters (occupying a building, damaging government property...) the number of supporters decreases to 14% or even less. Support for racist or revolutionary teachers is at the same low level. Unfortunately, it is impossible to say whether it is so because of people's understanding of the extremity of their position, or simply, because the role of teacher is connected in public opinion with stricter demands concerning their political views, since the questions about people's attitudes toward the possibility of other types of dissidents teaching in school were not available.
Returning to the scheme I need to say that the high level of correlation means only the consistency of attitudes, saying nothing about trends. In order to understand the content of this consistency the data were analysed with the help of quick cluster analysis. The questions which were the base for the clusters were the same as for the correlation matrix and were precisely described above. The complete version is represented in the Appendix.1
It is obvious that there is some difference between the consistency of attitudes in these clusters: people in the first cluster seem to be consistent in their intolerance. There is only one remarkable exception: they are more likely to tolerate racists holding public meetings. Can this toleration be the other side of racial intolerance? It seems that it can.
The second cluster seems to be more inconsistent. But it is only so at first glance. In fact this is the real consistency of attitudes, perhaps there are indeed some principles behind it. (What these principles are is the theme for another study). This is a consistency according to topics. Figure 1 demonstrates close agreement in attitudes both to revolutionaries and to racists. Both are probably not allowed to hold public meetings to express their views, definitely not allowed to teach 15 year olds in schools, but almost definitely are allowed to publish books expressing their views. People in the second cluster perhaps consider publishing books the safest expression of dissidents' energy \*- a very humanistic approach. The third cluster unites the people who differ in their attitudes towards dissidents: they are more likely to allow different forms of dissident activity, but are rather more strict in their attitudes towards common forms of political protest than are people in the second cluster.
More than a third of people in the first cluster were older than 60. On the contrary, in the third cluster 36% of respondents were younger than 30 years old. The distribution according to age in the second cluster is more uniform. It is common knowledge that it is more easy to accept new things in younger life. But the connection between age and toleration is more complicated than that. Toleration is highly connected with the diversity of environment. It is created by heterogeneity. The beginning of independent life enlarges the social experience, increases the variety of every day life. By age 60 there is a routine way of life, with strong habits and so on. By and large the social environment for elderly people, especially after retirement, becomes more homogeneous.
The distribution among clusters according to sex has the following features: 59% females in the first cluster; 48% in the second and 43% in the third. So a high proportion of females in the first cluster does not necessarily mean intolerance in women. It can be the consequence of such a well-known fact as the higher proportion of females among the elderly.
The next remarkable point is connected with party affiliation. One can call the first cluster the `right cluster' (more than half of the respondents included in this cluster described themselves as the members of `right' parties), and the third cluster can be called the `left cluster' (55% described themselves as members of `left' parties). The differences among people in such attitudes as toleration are indeed indicators of their political views. But in order to improve political interaction, to make it more efficient it is necessary to accept toleration as a valuable part of such interaction, independent from particular political differences.
The idea of political toleration is especially interesting because of the current situation in the Soviet Union. It is not, it seems to me, very popular now among the people, the great part of whom were brought up under the dominance of Marxism-Leninism, which was presented to the broad audience in a one-dimensional way and as dogma. Political diversity was suppressed (the slogan, very popular in its time, giving some idea of the situation before was `there is nothing more human than our class struggle'). But historical experience shows us that diversity cannot be supressed for long.
Concerning toleration in socialism, attention is commonly paid to freedom of speech. Indeed, it was a crucial point of `living socialism' for 70 years. Of course, it was the context in which the idea of toleration appeared and was proclaimed during the last five years. But nevertheless this interpretation is a narrow one. The more important factor is the toleration of discordance and the recognition of social diversity (cultural, political diversity etc.). But the crucial point for `real socialism' is the problem of power. The question `in whose hands is power?' is the key question in all Soviet history. Political diversity was supressed in favour of the `strong hand'. Diversity was a threat to power. Due to such circumstances there was no tradition of the practice of toleration. Toleration itself was not even a real tool. It was a sin. `Non-denunciation' was simply a crime. Several generations were brought up in a one-dimensional world (this may also be one of the reasons for the modern political crisis). The question now is: how to get used to living in a heterogeneous world?
Due to some changes in the Constitution of the USSR in the spring of 1990, the possibility of different political views was officially ratified. New parties appeared. But the absence of working principles of political interaction became an impediment. Toleration was used according to the much quoted expression of Marcuse as `in varying degrees hypocritical masks to cover appalling political realities'. The creation of political diversity was (and now is) going on more or less succesfully, and toleration, from being a `pure tool', has turned out to be more a `tool+value', but not yet a `virtue', a `good' in itself. Nevertheless, even the simple `proclaiming' of it is a great step forward. The impoverishing tradition of commitment to simplified principles is an embarrasment for further development. To accept toleration as a value, means to open the door.
Turning attention now to other issues that merit further theoretical and empirical research, there are many other items which were obviously overlooked in the present work since the theory of toleration represented here is by no means complete. A good deal needs yet to be learned about the limits and demands of toleration, a problem which was by-passed in this paper. For instance, it would be desirable to know the relationship between traditions and diversity as the source of originality. Another problem worthy of investigation is the translation of toleration as a value both in cross-cultural and cross-generational contexts. In a similar way, it is necessary to study also how tolerant/intolerant attitudes are formed in childhood and the conditions under which they change. The precise sociological investigation of tolerant or intolerant attitudes implies previous knowledge of public `acceptance' in order to avoid the influence of the researcher's preferences or the pressure of `common sense'. The concrete programme of complete research has to be developed.
The preceding suggestions are not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other methodological, theoretical and empirical problems to supplement issues which have already been raised in this paper. The study of toleration in the Soviet Union has only just begun.
This paper was written during the course of the Soviet Summer School, 1990, University of Kent, Canterbury. Those three monthes were exceptionally happy ones for me from a professional point of view. I would like to record my thanks to Chris Rootes, my academic adviser. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Ray Pahl and his wife Jan, who provided very helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of the paper; also to Cynthia Buckley and Jerry Eades, who remained good-natured and patient through all my problems during this work.
Special thanks are due to Anthony Heath, University of Oxford, who was very kind in helping me with the empirical part of my research and who commented on the idea of this paper.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Susan Mendus, University of York, without whose books and friendly advice the whole paper could not be possible.
1. Within the `quick cluster analysis' technique the number of clusters depends only on the researcher's preferences. The argument for three clusters in my case was the result of preliminary factor analysis of the same data. Since the `eigenvalue' was more than 1 in three cases only, the cumulative percentage of these three factors was 60% and only these factors were extracted by programme for principal-component analysis and included into final statistics. All this was treated as the ground for three clusters. All questions under consideration had a four-point scale (plus `can't choose'): `definitely allowed' (=1); `probably allowed' (=2); `probably not allowed' (=3); `definitely not allowed' (=4). So the lower the cluster centre \*- the more tolerant are the people included in this cluster.
The questions which were used for the secondary analysis in this paper are reproduced on the following pages. The formulation is quoted according to British Social Attitudes: the 1986 Report. (pp.228-229).
The numbers of questions are given in two forms: the first complies
with the list of variables on the active file which was processed, the
second complies with the numbers in British Social Attitudes:1985.
`Self-completion questionnaire'.
In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?
Obey the law without exception
Follow conscience on occasions
Can't choose
There are many ways people or organisations can protest against a government action they strongly oppose. Please show which you think should be allowed and which should not be allowed by ticking a box on each line.
Organising public meetings to protest against the government. Should it be allowed?
Definitely allowed
Probably allowed
Probably not allowed
Definitely not allowed
Publishing pamphlets to protest against the government. [NB The scale is the same in all questions below.)]
Organising protest marches and demonstrations.
Occupying a government office and stopping work there for several days.
Seriously damaging government buildings.
Organising a nationwide strike of all workers against the government.
There are some people whose views are considered extreme by the majority.
a) First, consider people who want to overthrow the government by revolution. Do you think such people should be allowed to...
hold public meetings to express their views?
teach 15 year olds in schools?
publish books expressing their views?
b) Second, consider people who believe that whites are racially superior to all other races. Do you think such people should be allowed to...
hold public meetings to express their views?
teach 15 year olds in schools?
publish books expressing their views?
Morality and Politics. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.