Released: January 20, 2010

The Post-Communist Generation in the Former Eastern Bloc

A Pew Global Attitudes survey conducted in fall 2009 finds that members of the post-communist generation, who are now between the ages of 18 and 39, offer much more positive evaluations of the political and economic changes their countries have undergone over the past two decades than do those who were adults when the Iron Curtain fell. The younger generation is also more individualistic and more likely to endorse a free market economy than are those who are age 40 or older.

Throughout 2010, the Pew Research Center will release a series of reports that explore the values, attitudes and behavior of America's Millennial Generation, which first came of age around the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and played an important role in the election of President Barack Obama. The Pew Research Center's Global Attitude Project's contribution to this project focuses on a somewhat different age group: the post-communist generation in the former Eastern bloc. The older members of this generation came of age as their countries began to transition away from communism toward democracy and capitalism, and its youngest members were just being born as communism was collapsing. Their political socialization has taken place under a context that is drastically different from that of their older peers, who came of age under totalitarian regimes.

Read complete commentary at pewresearch.org