Half of All Russians Say Unmarried Couples Living Together Outside of Marriage ‘Normal,’ Levada Center Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 17 – In a finding that suggests Russians are less committed to the traditional values Putin says he favors, approximately 50 percent of all Russians say that unmarried couples living together outside of marriage is “normal,” according to the latest survey of the Levada polling group.

            Fifty-six percent of men and 46 percent of women across all age groups take that position, with only a third of the men and only slightly more – 39 percent – of the women taking the opposite and officially approved position, the pollsters explain (levada.ru/2022/11/17/normativnye-vzglyady-na-brak-detej-i-semejnye-roli/).

            As one might expect, younger people are more ready to support cohabitation outside of marriage than older ones, an indication that the Kremlin leader’s campaign to promote what he calls “traditional 34 values” will face ever greater opposition among the Russian people as older people pass from the scene and younger ones become ever more dominant.

            The survey also found that more than half of the women and just under half of the men say that single mothers can raise children just as well as married couples and two-thirds of both genders say that men and women should share equally in work in the home, a very different position than Putin propagandists and their allies in the ROC take.

            But these are not the only positions the Russian people take at odds with Putin’s. According to the Levada Center, 59 percent want two children or fewer, a pattern that will not solve the country’s demographic problems, while only 34 percent want three children and only six percent want four or more, the kind of large families the Kremlin says it would like to see.