Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 12 – Sixty-one
percent of Russians say they seek to avoid any contact with the government, and
52 percent say they do not want to participate in political life, according to
a new Levada Center poll. Both these
figures are higher than they have been and reflect a turning away from politics
by ever more Russians.
In an article in today’s Kommersant entitled “A Non-Political
Nation is Taking Shape in Russia,” journalist Liza Miller presents the results
of this survey and speaks to two experts about the meaning of this pattern for
Russians and the future of the Russian political system (kommersant.ru/doc/3268676).
According to Levada Center
sociologist Aleksey Grazhdankin, “people do not see a direct connection between
the results of elections and the changes which affect them personally.”
Consequently, they are not inclined to participate either in political activity
for or against the regime.
“As a rule,” he continues, “citizens
are not active.” They focus on their own lives and view their political
participation as being limited to voting.
That is because “they recognize that politics above all depends on the
president,” something that could push them in another direction if there were a
plausible alternative candidate to the incumbent.
Thirty percent of Russians says that
“politics is not for ordinary citizens; instead, it is the powers that take
part in politics; 15 percent say politics is “a dirty business,” and five to six
percent explain their possibility by saying that they don’t want to stand out
of the crowd or be subject to persecution by the authorities.
Moscow political analyst Konstantin
Kalachev adds that “the majority of citizens don’t know the formula that ‘if
you don’t get involved in politics, politics will get involved with you.’” They
want a paternalistic state but at the same time they don’t want to maintain
contact with it or believe that even voting really matters.
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