Most Russians Think a Security Service Killed Nemtsov; They Divide on Whose, Internet Poll Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 7 – Two-thirds of Russians taking part in an internet poll conducted say they are sure they know who killed Boris Nemtsov. A majority says that this crime was the act of a security service. But Russians are divided about equally between those who think it was a Russian security service and those who think a Western one was responsible.

 

            Only 31 percent of the 26,000 people who took part said on the site of the Center for Research on Mass Electronic Consciousness said they didn’t know who was responsible and would wait for investigators and the courts to determine the answer (cimes.pro/who-murdered-nemtsov/).

 

            But as Vladimir Ilin, who blogs from the Komi Republic, points out in a comment on these figures, which must be treated with skepticism given that those taking part are self-selected rather than chosen to reflect the population at large, most clearly knew who was guilty “in the very first seconds after the crime was committed” (7x7-journal.ru/post/55238).

 

            “Especially popular,” he says, “is the version according to which the special services did this” because as he points out “the conviction that the special services are all powerful and made history is one of the characteristic aspects of contemporary mass consciousness” at least in the Russian Federation.

 

            The only question is “whose?”  The answer to that, Ilin says, “depends on political convictions: committed opponents of Putin do not doubt that this was done by Russian knights of the cloak and dagger, but those who do not have such a clearly expressed negative view of him – and these are not necessarily his supporters – place the blame on other special services,” supposed interested in triggering a Russian Maidan.

 

            That latter problem suffers from faulty logic, the Mari Republic blogger suggests. After all, why would those who want a Maidan in Russia kill “the last potential leader” of such a rising?  But, of course, “belief does not require” logic or evidence. As Tertullian observed, “credo quia absurdum est.”