Tag "public opinion"
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia In the run-up to the pandemic-delayed Victory Day parade, 95 percent of Russians told VTsIOM that the victory over Nazi Germany was the most important event in their country’s history in the 20th century, with 65 percent declaring it was the most important event in all of Russian history (wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=10339). Such views were more widely held among older Russians and less widely among younger ones,…
By EU vs Disinfo Almost one-fourth of Russians (23.2%) consider the COVID-19 pandemic a fiction, concocted by the “interested parties”, Russian media reports. An additional 9% of Russians think that the danger of the pandemic is exaggerated. These are the findings of an online nationwide survey conducted by the Directorate for the Expert Analysis of the Higher School of Economics – one of the Russia’s leading universities. The survey was conducted…
By Kseniya Kirillova, for Byline Times Against the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic, Russian President Vladimir Putin cancelled a largely symbolic nationwide referendum on his constitutional amendments, including the ‘nullification’ of the presidential term. But Viktor Shenderovich – a Russian journalist and playwright – believes that Putin’s motive in doing this has nothing to do with his sense of responsibility for people’s lives. Shenderovich puts forward two possible explanations for…
By EU vs Disinfo Following indications of a decrease in president Putin’s personal approval rating, Russia’s state-owned polling agency last month decided to publish the results of an alternative methodology, in which voters were asked a different question. As a result of the new wording, the number immediately skyrocketed from 30.5% – the lowest since 2012 – to an impressive 72.3%. From open to closed question The trick to make…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia Staunton, March 13 – Many people have been struck by new polls showing that Russians have remarkably positive attitudes about Ukrainians and wish to live in peace and harmony with them, results that suggest the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts are no longer obtaining the results they did earlier, Ivan Davydov says. But these Levada Center poll results, which are echoed by polls showing an equally…
By EU vs Disinfo Britain has charged two Russian military intelligence officers with poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, but only a fraction of Russians pin the blame on their country’s secret services. A poll by Russia’s independent Levada Centre shows that 28 percent of Russians believe the Skripals were in fact poisoned by British intelligence services, with only 3 percent saying the attack was carried out by Russian intelligence services.…
By EU vs Disinfo Do Russians actually believe the disinformation they see on the national TV channels? Or do they rather take it with a grain of salt? Answers provided in fresh polling from the state-controlled Russian pollster, VTsIOM, and presented in English by The Moscow Times, are absolutely clear. 66% of the respondents agreed with the statement that “there is a group of people who seek to rewrite Russian history and replace…
By Paul Goble, Windows on Eurasia There have been innumerable surveys of Russian attitudes over the last decade, but most of them have been limited in their value by the fact that participants likely answered some of the most important questions by saying what they believed those behind the polls wanted to hear, Igor Yakovenko says. But two polls, one taken in 2010 and a second just now by the…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia The depoliticization of the Russian population via the revival of archaic values provides the regime with a reserve of unquestioning support, a new study says; but at the same time, it means that “the political elites are not capable of developing a stable agreement on the main questions of the development of Russian society.” Sociologists Sergey Patrushev and Lyudmila Filippova say that “alienation from…
By Maxim Trudolyubov, for Eurozine The days when Soviet citizens had only three or four TV channels to choose from are long gone. Today, Russians have hundreds of options. So why, asks Maxim Trudolyubov, do they still choose just one? Most Russians live in an information universe that is utterly peculiar and starkly different from most others. Russia’s state-run television commands immense power over Russian minds and most Russians apparently…
