Sadly that freezer has broken down There’s a few theories that I push over and over again when discussions on European social trends come up:
Communism was a “deep freezer” that conserved antediluvian (“based” in our lingvo) social attitudes in Eastern Europe, at least relative to countries under the American sphere of influence.
These attitudes express themselves particularly strongly on LGBT, immigration, and nationalism.
Russia is an organic part of this East European space (so a corollary is that any long-term democratic successor to Putin will be a right-wing populist in the mold of Orban or Netanyahu).
The deep freezer broke down with the fall of Communism, with the subsequent thaw bringing “conserved” nationalist sentiments (or Islamist ones) to the surface.
Consequent integration into the Euro-Atlantic information space – if to variable degrees – has promoted progressive views (“GloboHomo” in our lingvo) in Eastern Europe.
There is now a race between new conversions to GloboHomo and the rate at which it is vindicated or discredited in its American and West European “early adopters.”
The latest PEW poll on social attitudes in Europe provides some of the strongest evidence for points #1-#3
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