Achieving World Peace: Views from Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Greece

Abstract

This chapter deals with perception of ordinary citizens from Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Greece regarding the possibilities or elusiveness of achieving world peace. Despite important differences among these states, there are also many interconnections, mainly among dyads and triads of the four: Slavic group of people, Orthodox Christianity, similar languages, and enough similarities to justify common analysis. The sample consisted of 440 participants, aged from 18–82; 59 % are women. They were asked to signify their level of agreement with the item “I believe world peace can be achieved” and then to explain the answer. They also completed the statement “The best way to achieve peace is….” Bandura’s theory of moral engagement provided the framework for the coding manual. Analyses of coded responses were conducted to determine the relative distribution of responses within the coding categories, and some exploratory statistical tests were run to see if there were differences in frequencies of responses based on demographic groups. Despite differences among the countries in level of development, political culture, and current politics, the great majority of answers in all subsamples showed a clear propensity among the ordinary people of the region to argue in favor of world peace. The hope is that the results will not serve as information for the mighty who will find to which level they can oppress others in order to obtain dominance (euphemistically: “national interest”).Rather, it is hoped that the results will contribute to the optimism of ordinary people, regardless of their social system and geographical meridian, regarding a broad commitment to achieve world peace as an ultimate goal of humankind.