11.03.09

More than 50% Russians are convinced that Russia is on a wrong track nowadays. And which track is correct? The impression is that a return to the Soviet past is the best society can come up with. Levada-Center conducted an opinion poll where its sociologists asked the same old questions and received the same old answers. Forty-four percent respondents said that "it would have been nice to have everything the way it was before the perestroika" (41% disagreed with that). The Russians promoting "state planning and state distribution" vastly outnumbered those who seconded "private property and free enterprise" (58% against 28%).

Like the knight on a certain famous painting, Russian society still stands before the same old choice between capitalism and socialism it first stood before in the 19th century. The attempt to build socialism in the 20th century is remembered fondly nowadays even though the attempt in question cost almost every third Russian his or her life. Promoters of free enterprise constitute a minority practically everywhere. They outnumber all the rest only among businessmen, youths, Muscovites, and the well- to-do.

This growth of anti-bourgeois disposition could be chalked off to the crisis which allegedly compromised the capitalist system, but... Promoters of capitalism were more frequent in December 1998 (another crisis year) than they are nowadays. In fact, popularity of this choice began dwindling only with Vladimir Putin's ascension to the pinnacle of political power in Russia. Promoters of capitalism numbered less than one third of the population by the end of Putin's presidency. Promoters of state planning in the meantime multiplied and became an absolute majority.

Same with the political choice. When Boris Yeltsin's days as the president were drawing to their close, 43% stood for the Soviet political system, 32% for Western-type democracy, and 6% for what democracy had been built in Russia by then. When Putin was resigning as the president, democrats numbered only 15%, promoters of Soviet power 24%, and people finding no faults with what system was "current" then numbered more than 36%. In other words, at least the political choice had been made then.

These days, however, most Russians are disappointed with the "current" or Putin's system (neither a Western-type democracy nor a Soviet regime). Less than 25% support it. Society pins its hopes on soviets - just like in 1996. People who claim that soviets are just the ticket number 36%. Promoters of a democracy "like in the West" number only 18% or so. Interesting enough, democrats outnumber promoters of the existing system and supporters of a return to the Soviet past only among administrators.

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Source: “Vedomosti”