The Authoritarian Personality in the United States and the Former Soviet Union: Comparative Studies

Until the spring of 1988, Soviet psychologists had almost no access to Western research on authoritarianism. Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford’s (1950) classic, The Authoritarian Personality, was found only in special library preserves, and even specialists had great difficulty getting access to this work. Books on related constructs, such as Rokeach’s (1960) The Open and Closed Mind on dogmatism, were similarly restricted, at least in many areas of the former Soviet Union. While many Soviet psychologists knew these works existed, very few had the opportunity to read and evaluate them first hand.