Voice of the People (since July 2008) Part I

Go out to the people! and ask them lots of questions.

Since the last time I covered Levada‘s opinion polls was a whopping half a year back, I reckon its time to make an update on what Russians are thinking since then. A comprehensive kind of post, like what I did in Lovely Levada (check it out, if you haven’t already!) and hopefully a good resource for Russia-watchers of all stripes. Russophobes will find some good material here too . I’ll start from the most recent and presumably relevant ones, and work my way down to where we left off last July, trying to select polls that are non-repetitive and interesting. Please note that there is a Part II since the original post was too long to post.

2009, Feb 13: Two opinion polls on wellbeing and consumer expectations. The Crisis and Social Feelings has lots of different graphs of consumer confidence plummeting down towards the end of 2008, as everywhere else in the world. People are postponing consumption; preferences are shifting from the Euro to the $, but the ruble remains surprisingly strong; and worryingly, 41% think the economy will not start recovering for more than a year compared to 27% who think otherwise (my own bet is half a year to a year, as I wrote in previous posts).

The second poll is the Crisis and problems in consumer credit. It has an interesting chart of how people’s feelings about buying expensive things on loans changed from 2001 to 2009. Not surprisingly they collapsed recently, which is one of the main reasons that car sales, of instance, have fallen off a cliff. What I find more interesting is that the height of debt mania was during the mid-2000′s. Meanwhile, attitudes worsened during the past two years, when the worst excesses of Russian corporate binging on cheap foreign credit took place.

Dynamics of positive and negative feelings towards buying expensive stuff on debt. Debt-averse | Debt junkies.

The number of Russians buying electronics, furniture, cars and real estate on credit grew rapidly in recent years, from 26% in 2003 to 38% in 2008 and was more prevalent amongst younger generations (unsurprisingly). There is confirmation that the consumer wellbeing of Russians definitely improved. From 2001 to 2008 the percentage of the population having difficulties buying enough food more than halved from 21% to 9%, while those that could be classed genuinely middle-class by Western standards (those who have enough money for necessities and reasonably priced consumer durables) increased from 7% to 18%, stats on ownership of consumer durables by household wealth and lots of data on the opinions of who with unpaid debts.

Feb 11: I came across a recent British poll on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, which indicated a whopping 51% of Britons believed in “intelligent design”. With the exception of old people (> 55 years), the younger people were the stronger was their rejection of evolution. (Although a caveat is that the evolution denialists were more concentrated around London and the West Midlands, so I suspect concentrations of Muslims would have played a role too). No wonder the Flynn effect of increasing IQ over time is stagnating since the last few decades in advanced countries.

Results from Russia were no better, sadly. Only 20% subscribe to the Darwinian theory of evolution; 13% believe that God created man, and 43% believe it was both (i.e. presumably intelligent design). 49% believe humanity was created by God and 26% consider it descended from the apes.

Feb 9: Things worsening on the labor front. From October to December the number of people or their family members being withheld salaries rose from 10% to 30% of respondents, those having salaries cut rose from 6% to 29% and experiencing layoffs rising from 7% to 30%.

Surveys from 2001 to 2009 of how many people have cell phones…

…and access to a computer.

About 35% of Russians now use a computer at least once a week, up from 12% in 2001. Internet penetration in January 2009 was at 24% if users are defined as those who use it at least once per week, up from just 3% in 2001.

Finally, a poll on human rights. Russians tend to value social rights like access to free education, medical pensions and old age social security (68%); right to life (58%); and right to a well-paid job for one’s specialization (51%). More traditional Western rights like property (33%), freedom of speech (28%), freedom of religion (15%) and electing representatives to the government (13%) aren’t as relatively popular. Contrary to popular belief, this is not unique to Russia and a similar pattern is prevalent throughout Eastern Europe, including the likes of Poland or Ukraine. This is because they went through times of social hardship and realize that abstract Western notions of freedom mean little when there’s no bread.

Jan 30:Graphs on historic relations towards the US, the EU, Ukraine and Georgia.

Russian approval towards the US dips sharply whenever they have an acute foreign policy conflict, as in 1999 (bombing of Serbia), 2003 (Iraq invasion) and 2008 (Georgia intervention). There is also a secular stagnation that saw the US going from being regarded in a very positive light in Putin’s early days to neutral-negative territory. The dynamics in US views of Russia have been very similar. Let’s hope that the 34% of Russians who think relations will improve under Obama are correct. The EU has had historically higher approval ratings than the US and has always remained in net positive territory. It has declined in the past eight years, but at a slower pace than the US until it dipped very sharply during the Ossetian War. Initially good views of Ukraine started declining after the Orange Revolution, dipping sharply in the wake of hostile rhetoric during the Ossetian War and going into negative territory for the first time in history. Relations continue deteriorating due to the gas crisis. Georgia was never viewed positively and net approval turned negative in 2005. Not surprisingly it plummeted to -58% during the war and stayed low since.

Jan 29: mention an international survey of the morality of national foreign policies from World Public Opinion. Interesting, almost as many Ukrainians believe in the morality of Russian foreign policy as Russians themselves; Western nations give it uniformly very low marks.

Jan 27: 27% support tariffs on foreign cars and 46% oppose them. On the topic of the Gaza War, the Americans/US/Bush/NATO/The West were blamed by 31%, Islamists/Arabs by 15%, Israel/Jews by 12%, oil companies by 2% and Iran by 1%. Some 12% support the Palestinians, 10% support the Israelis and the rest are neutral or don’t care. 56% believe terrorists should be killed, while 24% support negotiations. 17% support the Israeli operation against Hamas and 47% are opposed. The vast majority think Russia should either try to foster peace between the warring parties or stay out altogether.

Jan 22: Leader approval ratings and state of the nation. More people are starting to think the country is on the wrong track, but not at a fast rate (morale is still much higher than it was for almost the entire period 1996-2006). As of January 2009, Medvedev’s approval was at 75% and Putin’s at 83%, virtually unchanged from the last nine years. Therefore talk of popular uprisings is clearly premature.

Net approval ratings of Putin and Medvedev

Jan 12: The most significant events of 2008 were the death of Patriarch Alexei II (41%), the South Ossetian War (39%), election of Medvedev (39%), the financial/economic crisis (38%), the Beijing Games (21%), reduction of conscription to twelve months (20%), Russian recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence (18%) and Russian footballing successes (15%). (I skipped a few). I think the most significant events were the economic crisis and the Ossetian War from the list, in that order.

2008, Dec 24: More evidence that talk of popular uprising is premature. As of December, 66% of Russians believed the likelihood of mass protests against falling living standards or for defense of rights was unlikely in their town or region; only 20% said they were ready to man the barricades. These figures are totally unchanged from previous years. Russians on the fall of the USSR and the future of the CIS. As of 2008, 60% regret the fall of the Soviet Union; 55% think it could have been avoided. These figures have remained remarkedly steady since 1992. The future of the CIS is viewed in a negative light, with only 19% expecting further integration and 25% awaiting intensifying conflict or dissolution. On the topic of what they want to develop on the post-Soviet space…

Dec 11: On unemployment, 47% think its unacceptable. Dec 8: On industrial action / strikes,

Dec 5: Reading in Russia: Trends and Problems, a Levada report for the government that you can download.

Nov 27: Reacting to the election of an African-American, Russians expressed amazement (16%), satisfaction (15%), delight (15%), annoyance (2%), indignation (1%) and envy (<1%). 58% weren’t emotionally affected.

Nov 20: According to World Public Opinion on attitudes towards government responsibilities, 77% of Russians think the government should guarantee food for all which is somewhat lower than international norms (the vast majority says this in all countries). 68% of Russians believe the government is doing an inadequate job in providing food, compared with 80% in Ukraine and Argentina, 47% in the US, 56% in France and 12% in Germany. Interestingly the figure is only 37% in India, which still suffers from widespread malnutrition.

Nov 18: Interethnic tensions. Some 11% of Russians regularly sense hostility from other ethnicities, while 58% never do – this figure has remained roughly unchanged since 2002, despite the big inflows of immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia and the very well publicized rise in racist murders. However, 39% believe that large-scale, violent conflicts are possible in Russia, and 20% think it possible in their own region. However, these are down from 49% and 24%, respectively, in 2002.

Nov 11: Russian views of US leaders. Of the last four Presidents, 28% thought relations were best with Bill Clinton (28%), Reagan, Bush I and Bush II got around 10% each. 39% thought the Democrats were better for Russia-US relations, 11% preferred Republicans. Obama (27%) was much more popular than McCain (15%).

Oct 31: Russians are by and large indifferent to the YUKOS case.

Oct 23: Attitudes towards the financial crisis. As of October, 72% of people had no savings and 21% did, little changed from 2002. Some 35% thought that housing was the best asset class, compared with 8% for gold, 12% for cash, 25% for Sberbank and 4% for commercial banks / stocks. These figures also remained static over history. Below are detailed stats on historical currency preferences…

and on social wellbeing (PS: “enough money for basics, not consumer goods” is short-hand for “enough money for food / clothes, buying stuff like TV’s, fridges is a difficulty for us”, same with other categories).

Since Russians are pessimistic – throughout this period the number of people claiming their financial position will get worse in the coming months was consistently higher than those seeing an improvements, in contrast to reality – it is more the trend that matters above. So quote that whenever a Russophobe claims that it is only the oligarchs living in Rublevka who’ve improved their lot in Russia under Putin.

Oct 14: As if well known, the police do not have a good reputation in Russia. According to a recent poll, only 21% of respondents believe they deserve trust, while 43% think they don’t fully deserve it and 28% believe they completely don’t deserve it. Geographically, by far the most negative responses are in cities of <500,000 people exception Moscow, where 14% of people think they deserve trust and 37% think that they wholly don’t deserve trust. In Moscow, the figures are 22% and 16%, respectively; 26% and 25% in smaller towns; and 18% and 28% in rural areas. The poorest have the least amount of respect for the police; apart from them, attitudes are similar across social classes. Interestingly, people with a higher education have much higher respect for the police (37% for and 20% against) than less educated Russians.

Police net approval

Above is a historical graph of a police approval index. If A = people who say the police deserve trust, B = not wholly deserving, and C = totally undeserving of trust, then the index is calculated by Index = A – 0.5B – C. As with many other indexes of social trust and confidence covered in Lovely Levada, it seems a strong trend to improvement began around about mid-2007.

Oct 7: 46% Russians have a close friend or relative living abroad, mostly in the post-Soviet space.

Sept 24: 67% of Russians believe Russia will qualify for the football World Cup in 2010, while a 13% league of fifth-columnists believes otherwise.

Related posts:

1. Voice of the People (since July 2008) Part 2
2. Voice of the People Part 3
3. News 21 July: Expansion amidst Turbulence
4. New Year Special, Part 2: 2011 Predictions
5. The People’s Choice, or how Ukrainians are learning to stop worrying and love Eurasia