Authoritarian leaders frequently send mixed messages about law. While official rhetoric typically emphasizes obeying law, leaders have proven willing to sidestep the law when it proves inconvenient. We explore the impact of this duality on the attitudes of Russian citizens, drawing on three rounds of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. To identify the separate effects of cohort, age, and survey year, we use existing estimates of a function relating age to the predisposition to form new attitudes.