Kremlin’s Ability to Monitor All Phone Calls Threatens to Kill Telephone Polling in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 5 – Most polls in Russia are conducted by telephone, but the Kremlin’s statement that it has the capacity to monitor them and identify all callers and respondents threatens to end such surveys and, even more, lead to a situation in which most of the sociological services in that country will cease to operate.

            That is the conclusion of Russian pollsters, including Valery Fyodorov, the head of VTsIOM, and Artyemy Vvedensky of the Russian Field Poll, surveyed by the EchoFM portal (echofm.online/news/rossijskie-socziologi-pohozhe-skoro-lishatsya-vazhnejshego-sposoba-sobirat-dannye-telefonnyh-oprosov).

            Because Russians will lose whatever confidence they now have that they will not be identified and linked with their answers, these sociologists say, they will either not answer at all honestly or even more likely refuse to respond at all lest they get in trouble. That will render the polls either meaningless or impossible to conduct.

            While many in Russia have been alarmed by the consequences for telephone communications among Russians, this is perhaps the most dramatic and negative consequence of the Kremlin’s declaration for those who follow political developments in the Russian Federation and will deprive them of a much used, if sometime questioned source.