Thursday, December 5, 2019

MGIMO Not a Polling Agency and Its Claims about Belarusian Attitudes Not Justified, Minsk Scholar Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 2 – Russian, Belarusian and Western media devoted enormous attention to a new poll that showed 90 percent of Belarusians support the idea of having their country unite with Russia. But a leading Minsk expert immediately pointed out that there were many reasons to distrust that finding.

            First, Professor Andrey Vardomatsky says, the poll was supposedly carried out by MGIMO, the Russian foreign ministry’s training arm but not a place known for its polling, rather than by a professional pollster.  Thus, there is every reason to view it and dismiss it as propaganda (thinktanks.by/publication/2019/12/02/andrey-vardomatskiy-ya-ne-znayu-takoy-sotsiologicheskoy-organizatsii-kak-mgimo.html).

            Second, an examination of the questions supposedly asked and the methodology employed casts even more doubt on the figure Moscow has put so much effort into promoting, according to the head of the Belarussian Analytic Center. Not only did the poll not survey enough people to allow for a breakdown as presented, but it had other problems.

            The way in which the possible answers were formulate was sufficient unclear that someone responding might have answered yes to many of them even though the implications of his or her answer might be enormous. It is very different to say one wants good relations with a neighbor and wants to be absorbed by it.

            One more serious and carefully designed poll conducted several months ago, Vardamatsky says, fount that 75.6 percent of Belarusians wanted Belarus and Russia to be “independent but friendly countries with open borders, without visas or tariffs.” Only 15.6 percent said they should be united in one union state.

            And third, for such a poll to be useful, the Minsk sociologist continues, it would have been far better to compare Belarusian attitudes toward Russia with their attitudes toward the European Union that ask only about one direction. That would allow one to make more sense out of answers about relations with either. 

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