Voice of the People (since July 2008) Part 2

Please note that this is a continuation of Part 1.

Sept 22: Attitudes on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. 56% support stationing troops in South Ossetia while 27% support withdrawal. 40% believe recognizing their independence will benefit Russia, 15% think it will harm Russia and 28% believe it won’t make a difference one way or the other. 46% support their immediate or eventual inclusion into the Russian Federation, while 25% counsel caution and 12% are against.

Sept 16: 15% of Russians believe they can speak another language fluently, including 26% of 18-24 year olds, 30% of people with higher educations and 35% of Muscovites. Older, less educated and more rural people have generally lower stats. The most cosmopolitan professions are the Armed Forced / Ministry of Internal Affairs / public prosecution service (46%), admin / management (33%), indepedent entrepreneur (33%) and students (30%); the most insular are ordinary workers (8%) and pensioners (7%). According to older polls, the most popular languages are English (44%), other Slavic (19%) and German (15%). Amongst young people who know one or more foreign languages, the most popular are English (80%), German (16%) and French (4%).

9/11: Attitudes towards the Beslan terrorist acts. 33% believe there authorities are covering up the truth and 50% think they’re only communicating part of the truth. 12% considered the operation to rescue the hostages successful, 51% satisfactory and 25% unsatisfactory. Majorities believe that in hostage situations the priority should be to save the hostages rather than destroy the terrorists and 55% believe the authorities did all they could to save the Beslan hostages.

They cite a report from World Public Opinion on international opinions about who masterminded 9/11. 57% of Russians think it was Islamic terrorists, 15% the American government, 2% Israel and 4% other Arab governments. These numbers are very similar to other European countries. Large numbers of Arab respondents attributed it to Israel.

Sept 9: There was overwhelming support for Russia’s recognition of South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence, with 80% being for and 10% against. However, 64% would support allowing the return of Georgian refugees to those regions and protecting them from pressure on the part of Ossetins and Abkhazins. 34% support leaving regular Russian soldiers in South Ossetia while 43% favor a peace-keeping contingent, while 11% urge for withdrawal and substitution for UN and EU peacekeepers. 66% support using budgetary funds to reconstruct destroyed Ossetian infrastructure and 27% are against. Only 1% expressed agreement and 4% understanding with the negative positions of Western powers on Russia’s intervention, while 20% experienced bewilderment, 22% anxiety and 39% indignation. A big majority think that current tensions with the West will subside soon enough (correctly, as it turned out).

This is a good one – do Russians want freedom? Since Russophobes love to carp on about this, I’ll reproduce the results in detail. The first table deals with the question of whether Russians think they have enough freedom. As you can see, 56% believe they have enough freedom; more people actually believe they have too much freedom than too little.

Russophobes like to paint Russian men in particular as drunken beasts who enslave women and are particularly authoritarian, when in fact it is women who are (very slightly) more “authoritarian”. Nor are there great differences by age, education, wealth or place of residence. (Note: those that are poorly educated, poor and live in rural places and lost most from the end of the Soviet system tend to vote more on “too much freedom”, i.e. the freedom to steal national wealth, etc, as they perceive the situation).

Anyway, whenever you hear or read a Russian categorically stating that freedoms are dissipating or that poverty is soaring (well, admittedly the latter might be true for the last two or three months), note that she speaks only for herself and the c.10% of the population that are fifth-columnists, not the silent majority of Russians.

Social attitudes based on place of residence is a multi-issue poll organized according to where the respondents live. In September when this poll was held the ruble-$ exchange rate was 25:1, so 8k rubles was 320$, 16k rubles was 640$ and 22k rubles was 880$. (Note that to get a realistic comparison with the US you should double these figures to take relative puchasing power issues into account).

Lots of other interesting results there too.

Sept 3: A poll on access to education. 36% of Russians would like to complete one university degree and 24% prefer a specialized school or college. Others would opt for just the elementary or basic school (5%), completed high school (10%), technical school (9%), two universities (7%) and graduate studies (2%). Younger people, men and Muscovites report having affordable access to more educational opportunities; overall accessibility slightly increased from 2003. Interestingly, the number of people who wanted themselves or their children or grandchildren to get educated in a foreign university dropped to 39%, from 52% in 1999; those who do not want this increased from 24% to 36%. Younger people, men and those living in bigger cities are more favorable to the idea of getting a foreign education.

Sept 1: One of those inane greatest people polls. All the usual suspects – Pushkin, Peter the Great, Stalin, Lenin, Putin, Gagarin, Lomonosov, etc, dominate.

Aug 26: Attitudes towards the Prague Spring forty years on.

Aug 25: This poll registers improvements in perceptions of accessibility to education, healthcare and good jobs. All show slight improvements in the past six years, but remain deeply unsatisfactory. Can you and your family members get access to quality healthcare?

Can you, your children, grandchildren, etc, get a good education?

Can inhabitants of your town or region get a good job according to their specialization?

Aug 7: Detailed survey of Russian food consumption habits by food category. Also includes a long historical record of what share of their salaries Russians spent on food since 1991. We can see that during most of the 1990′s, a majority spent almost all their money on food; since then, this has fallen to just 14%. So again, a further reason for ignoring Russophobes who insist life did not get better for just about everyone under Putin.

Russians have mixed views on whether their mass media are free; 12% think its completely free, 34% think its mostly free, 35% think its mostly controlled, and 10% believe its totally controlled by the government.

Aug 4: A very comprehensive survey (and results of some past surveys) on Russian smoking patterns.

A very high percentage of people continue to smoke (37%), including 61% amongst men. This is up from 35% in 2004 and the same as in 2007. Most disturbingly there does not appear to be any clear trend of improvement with younger ages. Amongst professions the highest incidence of smokers can be found amongst independent entrepreneurs (63%), the unemployed (60%) and workers and farmers (56%); the lowest are admin/managers (27%), Armed Forces / Internal Affairs / Prosecutor’s Service (30%), students (30%) and pensioners; the highest rate of former smokers is in the Armed Forces / Internal Affairs / Prosecutor’s Service (29%). Interestingly, the highest numbers of smokers are amongst the well-off financially and Muscovites.

July 31: Russians believe the country needs a few strong opposing parties. The number of people wanting one strong party dropped from 43% in 1999 to 32% in 2008, while those favoring two or three big parties rose from 35% to 45%. Some 46% believe there is an opposition to the regime, while 35% disagree (by opposition they mean parties like the Communists, Just Russia, Yabloko, etc, not Kasparov’s pack of clowns). 62% believe the country needs an opposition, while 21% disagree.

July 28: Mixed views of businesspeople, with 45% viewing their activities as useful for Russia and 38% as harmful.

July 18: What do Russians believe in?. Faith in all kinds of mystical things like signs and dreams and the evil eye increased since the end of the Soviet Union, turning Russia from an atheistic to a pagan-Christian nation (like much of western Europe). Or maybe they just became more comfortable with admitting it.

Related posts:

1. Voice of the People (since July 2008) Part I
2. Voice of the People Part 3
3. News 21 July: Expansion amidst Turbulence
4. The People’s Choice, or how Ukrainians are learning to stop worrying and love Eurasia
5. War Nerd on the 2008 Ossetia War