The Larger the Russian Population Center, the More Pessimistic and Negative Its People, Levinson Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 3 – The larger the population center, with Moscow followed by the millionaire cities at the top, the greater the share of the population saying that the country is heading in the wrong direction, Aleksey Levinson of the Levada Center says. Conversely, the small, the greater the share showing optimism and approval of the Kremlin.

            Thus, polls find that 53 percent of Muscovites think the country is on the wrong track, while 53 percent of the residents of villages have that opinion. In part, this reflects the fact that the pandemic hit the cities harder than the villages and the large ones more than the smaller ones, but only in part (rosbalt.ru/russia/2020/12/03/1876216.html).

            It also reflects the differences in the way that urban residents and rural ones assess their situation, given that slightly more villagers said their economic situation had gotten worse over the last 12 months (50 percent) than in Moscow where 46.6 percent said that and in major cities other than the capital where 43 percent made such a declaration.

            In other words, the Levada Center found that “the live of the majority of villagers in 2020 got worse even more significantly than in Moscow and other major cities of the country,” but despite that, the villagers remained supportive of those in power.

            According to Levinson, this reflects two things: the tendency of villagers to be loyal to anyone in power and the fact that those most negative in their assessment of the government are the young and many of them have left for the cities, adding to negativity there but reducing it in rural areas.

            An additional explanation, Rosbalt’s Aleksandr Zhelenin says in reporting Levinson’s findings, is this. As of last year, there were 37.2 million Russians living in rural areas, but only a few more than two million were involved in agricultural work. Most of the others were pensioners or otherwise dependent on the regime for their incomes.

            Among these are teachers, policemen, postal workers, and the rural administration. These people will tend to be supportive of the regime out of self-interest. But what is striking, Zhelenin says in conclusion, is that nearly half of the rural population doesn’t support the regime, almost as large a share as is true among Muscovites.