Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 15 – Some
commentators have suggested that Vladimir Putin’s declining poll numbers
reflect his transparent effort to shift responsibility from himself to
governors, business and the people; but pollster Lev Gudkov argues that Russians
long ago factored in that Putin approach in their assessments of the Kremlin
leader.
Thus, the head of the Levada Center
says, the decline in his ratings reflect far broader and deeper phenomena,
including the sense that he serves the interests of the oligarchs and siloviki
rather than theirs and that his foreign and domestic policies increasingly are
failures (golos-ameriki.ru/a/interview-with-lev-gudkov/5372665.html).
For Russians, he tells VOA Russian Service
correspondent Viktor Vladimirov, “it has been perfectly obvious for a long time
that Putin retreats from responsibility everywhere he can, shifting it onto
other levels of power” and that he, “in general occupies himself with populist
rhetoric and looks quite hopeless.”
“The foundation of the present-day political construction”
in Russia, the sociologist continues, consist of “people who are indifferent
and alienated from politics.” Those who do support Putin rather than being
passively indifferent are provincial voters, “with not very much education and
older and the bureaucracy of various kinds.”
Those
who most negatively rate Putin are above all young people, and their negative
attitudes are growing “with each passing survey.” But even among them, there is
still a large share of people who remain at least in principle “neutral with
respect to the president,” Gudkov says.
That
shouldn’t surprise anyone, he continues, all authoritarian regimes rely on such
neutrality. In them, “people consider that they can’t influence the powers.”
And that means that they are mostly alienated even if they do not openly
express that view because they believe that what happens “on the political
scene” is not their affair.
Such
people, Gudkov concludes, “do not see the cause and effect connection between
the decisions the authorities take and their own daily life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment