Babich N.S. The Genesis of Public Opinion in Modern Russia (the case of support for Perestroika). Communicology. 2022. Vol. 10. No. 1. P. 80-96. (in Russ.). DOI: 10.21453 ...

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the reliability of the picture of Russian public opinion, which emerges from the polling data. A historical approach to this problem is proposed on the example of testing the generally accepted assumption about the initially high level of support for perestroika in Soviet society. The paper shows that the generally accepted assumption is based on three theses: (a) a particularly high level of support for perestroika at the initial stages; (b) the perception of the idea of perestroika by the population as meeting its needs; (c) the gradual decline in support for perestroika due to the difficulties encountered. The author dwells on each of them and demonstrates that they do not correspond to the available empirical data. The results of a comparative analysis show that (a) support for perestroika was not higher than the usual levels of approval of the Soviet leadership by the population; (b) the population did not associate their most actual expectations with perestroika; (c) the decline in support for perestroika did not occur in parallel with the fall in living standards, but simultaneously, after the weakening of Gorbachev’s power. By analogy with public support for Perestroika, we can conclude that the possible overestimation of the overall support for the political regime in modern Russia is a much less serious problem compared to the internal structure of this support, the distribution of the shares of those who express it declaratively and those who are ready to embody their political attitudes into real actions.