Sociological Research

ISSN: 1061-0154 (Print) 2328-5184 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/msor20

Editor's Introduction

Anthony Jones

To cite this article: Anthony Jones (2007) Editor's Introduction, Sociological Research, 46:4, 3-5

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/SOR1061-0154460400

Published online: 08 Dec 2014.

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Download by: [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] Date: 08 April 2016, At: 11:52
 Sociological Research, vol. 46, no. 4, July–August 2007, pp. 3–5.
© 2007 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061-0154/2007 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/SOR1061-0154460400

Editor’s Introduction
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ANTHONY JONES

One of the most important social scientists of the past forty years in
Russia, Yuri Levada, died last November at the age of seventy-six.
He will be greatly missed on many grounds, including the fact that
he was one of the few public voices in Russia that spoke honestly
about sensitive political issues. This got him into trouble in 1969,
when he was fired from his teaching job at Moscow State University.
During the Gorbachev period, Levada’s careful and professional ap-
proach to public opinion research was given the opportunity to come
to the fore, and he was allowed to create what came to be the most
respected and influential public opinion survey center in the nation,
the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM). Readers
of this journal have been privileged to read articles from this center
since its founding. In 2003, in response to the increasing involvement
of the Russian government in the center’s activities, Levada left to
create his own, completely independent organization, the Analytic
Center Yuri Levada, and his own journal Vestnik obshchestvennogo
mneniia (Herald of Public Opinion). In many ways, his life and
career are symbolic of the Russian nation, and the ironies of his last
few years are both instructive and sad. We and the Russian people
are the poorer for his loss.
It is with an article by Levada from his own journal that we begin
this issue. In “Public Opinion in the Political Looking Glass,” he
focuses on the extent to which the state and society are “fused,”
the extent to which the state has become more authoritarian under

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 4 SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Putin, and the problems these factors cause for those who try to
measure public opinion. As he puts it, the
process of the separation of the state from society, which took place in
European-type countries back in the nineteenth century and served to
lay out the juridical contours of today’s rule-of-law states, still remains a
problem for the future in Russia. For this reason, neither public opinion
(“civil society”?) nor the state (its institutions) are capable of viewing
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each other “with detachment.” Moreover, the personal practical experi-

ence of the “mass” individual is least suited to a realistic understanding
of state political phenomena. For this reason, at the instigation of the
mass media and targeted political advertising or “PR,” the “mirror”
of public opinion is more likely to reflect, on the matrix of familiar
stereotypes, the prompted illusions and disappointments linked to
certain events and characters, rather than any assessment of real acts
(and even less, of institutions).
So, the question is what is being measured, the “real” views of
the population or the results of a massive public relations exercise
and media control on the part of central authorities? In this brief
but pointed account, Levada looks at some of the consequences
of the current situation (such as an emphasis in public opinion on
material conditions, a lack of interest in politics, anxiety about the
future, and the large percentage of the population that is “unde-
cided” on the major issues of the day), and tries to anticipate what
will happen when the post-Putin “transition” occurs. Much of
Levada’s language is Aesopian in the true Russian tradition, but in
“Traditional Features of Russian Political Culture in Their Current
Perspective” a colleague of Levada’s is quite explicit about the
nature of Russian society and public opinion. L.A. Sedov argues
that due to having lived in an authoritarian and highly control-
ling society for so long, Russians can be characterized as having
an adolescent mentality, as not having grown up in the way they
think and the values they have. That Putin could be elected twice,
and that his approval ratings have remained so high, Sedov sees as
evidence of the strength of an adolescent mentality, as also is the
decrease in tolerance on several fronts, including attitudes toward
homosexuals and people of non-Russian ethnicity. Continuing this
theme is an article by V.V. Petukhov (from Levada’s old VTsIOM
 JULY–AUGUST 2007 5

organization), “Civil Society and the Democracy of Participation.”

Pointing to the ways in which independent civil society activities
are controlled or co-opted by the state, Petukhov focuses on what
he calls “the nonparticipation syndrome,” which involves both a
high degree of mistrust in public institutions and a disinterest in
becoming involved in civil society. An exception, he notes, is the
rapid growth of youth organizations, many of which have strong
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authoritarian and intolerant characteristics.

We end with three articles on various aspects of migration. In
“Labor Migration from the Small Cities of Russia as a Means of
Survival,” Iu.F. Florinskaia looks at the factors that cause people to
move from small towns, and the extent to which they are success-
ful in adapting to a new place of residence. Then E.A. Nazarova’s
article, “Characteristics of Migration Processes in the Southern
Regions of Russia,” analyzes how the war in Chechnya and other
conflicts in the neighboring areas have forced people to move, the
effects this has on them, and how the host areas react to the pres-
ence of newcomers. We end with A.S. Shurupova’s “The Adaptation
and Acclimation of Migrants,” which briefly looks at adaptation
processes in the Lipetsk region.

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