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…
By Hromadske International Since 2014, Ukraine has lived through the most difficult period in its 26 years of independence. Ukrainians have experienced revolution, political transformation, war, internal displacement, and economic collapse. But how have these events changed their views of their country, its future, and the world? Hromadske set out to answer this question by examining changes in Ukrainian public opinion. To do this, we compared the results of a…
The Russian authorities have long promoted the idea that whatever is is forever as “an effective means of convincing people that the powers that be are always right” and that it is impossible and even dangerous to try to change anything, according to Gazeta journalist Semyon Novoprudsky. In an essay published today, the journalist says that he calls this “the syndrome of ‘imaginary eternity’” and sees evidence of this all…
By The Moscow Times State-run television is the principal source of news for a majority of young Russians, the independent Russian television channel Dozhd reported Friday. Fifty-four percent of Russians aged between 18 and 24 watch government-funded Channel One news casts, Dozhd reported citing a poll produced by the independent Levada Center. Channel One was the main source of information for 72 percent of respondents in all age groups, the poll published by Dozhd found, while just 26 percent said they never switch to television for…
