"It doesn’t matter what party you’re for – you’re certainly against thieves!” reads this placard at a protest in Moscow, 26 March. Image still via Radio Svoboda / YouTube. Some rights reserved.For the last 28 years, The Levada Center has been one of Russia’s most important surveyors of public opinion, but in 2016 the Putin government, having no use for independent sociology, added it to its list of “foreign agents”. oDR editors Polina Aronson and Mikhail Kaluzhsky met the center’s director Lev Gudkov to discuss solidarity, political protest, freedom and the role of sociology in a divided country. We are publishing his interview in two parts: in this, the second part of the interview, we discuss the post-Soviet mindset and ideas of freedom: you can read the first part here.
How has Russia’s economic crisis affected people’s readiness to defend their own interests? Could people finally be realising that you need to confront the authorities if you want to stand up for something?
Prior to the second half of 2015, Russia was in a state of political euphoria, but when sanctions were introduced, to be followed by counter-sanctions and a collapse in oil prices, everyone realised that the crisis was serious and systemic. It hit everybody, but two groups were particularly affected: on the one hand, the poorest – residents of villages and small towns in the depressed provinces who were nostalgic for the Soviet era with its cradle-to-grave welfare; and on the other – the most prosperous inhabitants of the big cities.
