Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 21 – Only 14 percent of Russians say they want to live under a capitalist system in Russia, while 44 percent say they would like to live under socialism, a chapeau assessment that is reenforced by the answers they gave about the state and the population, a survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The survey, the 55th such tapping of public attitudes on this subject by the institute since the 1990s, found that 36 percent said they were uncertain as to whether they favored a socialist or capitalist system (isras.ru/index.php?page_id=1198&id=14172 and svpressa.ru/society/article/478247/).
According to the poll, almost two-thirds of Russians believe the current Russian regime defends the interests of the rich and the bureaucracy, while roughly a third considers that the Kremlin is concerned about all Russians. Significantly, the poll found, “almost no one” thinks that the state is interested in defending the poor.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union promoted a Marxist-Leninist vision of the state ownership of the means of production ruled by a communist elite; and the West promoted free markets and democracy. The results of this poll show that what the West hoped to achieve on both points have not been.
And these results also suggest that the Putin regime will be able to count on a relatively large amount of support not only for its renewal of authoritarian governance but also for the continuing restriction of markets and a return to government control directly or indirectly of the most important means of production.
To the extent that is the case, these attitudes suggest that the West not only failed to achieve its goals, despite what many now claim, but by its inaction has allowed those who oppose both democracy and free markets to recover much of the position that many self-confidently assume they lost in 1991.
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