Love is…

The New Times decided to talk with people in the Russian province about their life, about the attitude to the president and the politics that he pursues. It turned out that not everyone loves Putin, but those who love can not always tell me what

The court sociologists record another record: the rating of approval of Vladimir Putin's activities is almost 90 %! It is not so simple, it turns out, to find a person in the country who does not approve of leadership policies. 9 out of 10 passers -by - with both hands for.

Skeptics urge the figures of official sociology. An independent sociologist explains: arguing about numbers is really pointless, but also to deny the obvious fact of the popularity of the leader is simply stupid. The Russians are worried about the collapse of the Union, which unexpectedly turned out to be significant, and have not yet begun to correlate a decrease in living standards with the success of the president in foreign policy. The political scientist clarifies: if we talk not about the abstract “approval”, but about the former and upcoming successes in the elections, then the miracle of folk love has a more prosaic name: falsifications leading to the degradation of the political system. A psychologist is ready to answer the question: where are they and who-those ten percent of the outcasts that still have not fallen into patriotic ecstasy.

And the Russians themselves continue to love the president, not noticing the contradictions, as it should be loving. “In domestic politics, there seems to be nothing. But there are no others. And in the secondary ... in vain we climbed into Syria. And we have to pay for the Crimea. But it’s great that the state is respected again. The Americans bent. Although everything has risen in price. And most importantly-there are no others. ”

There are no others.

How rich is the village of Listvyanka of the Iskitim district of the Novosibirsk region, which we are going to, can be understood in advance by the quality of the road. Two hours after leaving the Novosibirsk Airport, we turn off from the federal highway Novosibirsk - Barnaul and the car sharply begins to shake.

- Feel, they made the road with us? - the local driver asks proudly.

- No, - impolite, but honest.

“Well, they only knocked pits, however, they didn’t bed a new asphalt,” he stoods behind the road workers
taxi driver.

It turns out that the bumps have become smaller and now “the wheels are no longer torn off, as before,” this is a great achievement of the local administration.

... when good is more important than bad

In general, there are not so many achievements. “They made the road, they opened a kindergarten, no more children need to carry children somewhere, the population growth is small, but there is,” says Karina, a specialist in the village administration. She likes to work in the structure of local authorities, for a salary of 13 thousand. She even goes to a leaflet from a neighboring village. Karina generally likes everything: “We support Putin,“ United Russia ”. I, too, are in United Russia, we are all, the whole administration, we are in the United Russia, all party. This does not give us any bonuses, they just entered themselves, they themselves considered that it was necessary. ”

Joseph Dmitrievich Sudakov, a former deputy of the Listvyansky village council, is a local opposition. An elderly man, small in stature, with a white, neatly trimmed beard. Sudakov beat. They stuck leaflets against him. They started court cases. But he, he says, does not depress.

At home at Sudakov, repairs, which due to the crisis stretched for two years. In a small room, a sick mother -in -law looks at the full volume of Channel One. In a 15-meter large one, which is called the hall in the local lands, Joseph Dmitrievich feeds NT correspondent from the life of a rural deputy, and his wife Tamara Vasilievna-a pie with cabbage.

“Well ... when he performs on the world arena - that is, not domestic politics, but foreign policy, I like it. That we stopped bending before Europe and America "

The war on the political front of the foliage is mainly with troublesome. “Deputies are appointed to us on the lists of United Russia, and then they do not even go to meetings of the village council,” zander is lamented. Officials - the local, district, and regional - their own interests: “The budget is drunk, starting from a small village,” Joseph Dmitrievich draws the overall picture.

The budget does not have a very large budget-only 20 million rubles:
7 million own, the rest is the subsidies of the district and the region. Nevertheless, they “saw it too”: “They took coal for free, but they collected money for heating, they didn’t pay workers for the club’s repair, they stole trees there ...”

Federal problems worry less pike perch. As for Ukraine and Crimea, the spouses agree with each other and the authorities - “this belongs to us”, the Russians live there, the Russians built the mines of Donbass. According to Syria - the wife believes that we will defeat ISIS * , husband - that would win if we had intervened before.

Shakhmatova Street - Central Street in Listyanka. It has not yet been laid out with tiles, October 29, 2015

Finally, we reach Putin and his new record-supposedly a 90 percent support rating, judging by the surveys.

- And they did not ask us! I heard on TV - 1,400 people interviewed. Is this a figure for such a millionth country? - Tamara Vasilievna is indignant.

- Well, they ask you! You
1401th. Tell me what you think, ”Joseph Dmitrievich puts his wife.

- Don't know. By the way, I didn’t think about it, ”Tamara Vasilievna retorts before she thought for a short while. - Well ... when he performs on the world arena, that is, not domestic politics, but foreign policy, I like it. That we stopped bending before Europe and America.

- And the internal? - continues to communicate with the wife of Sudakov.

“Well, the internal - here we are, Russia,” Tamara Vasilievna is sad. - In the internal I don't like it.

- Here is the voice of the people! - agrees with his wife Joseph Dmitrievich. - That's it.

We are talking about good (external) and bad (internal) Putin’s policy will have to be heard in the Novosibirsk region more than once.

Putin's portrait every morning meets children who come to school, Novosibirsk Region, October 29, 2015

... when you feel safe

- I have a young guy, a psychologist - he has neither a category, no experience, a bet - five three hundred and eighty (5380 rubles. - NT). The bet of a psychologist! I give him another half -time of the social pedagogue. This is almost three more with something. Will a person for ten thousand work? Will he live with this money? I do not come up with bets! The industry agreement in the Novosibirsk region. And how to live, you asked? - The director of the rural school Albina Nikolaevna asks a rhetorical question. The director is a large and loud woman, acts as at a rally. The head teacher for educational work Marina Viktorovna, in whose office our conversation comes, - calm, more often nods silently. Teachers periodically look into the office.

-Here the girl came to us, from abroad! - The director explains to them the headwated, nodding to the NT correspondent.

-Not from abroad, from Moscow.

- Moscow for us is a foreigner! A separate state, consider, - teachers agree with their leader.

“That would write in Moscow, in the newspaper how the teacher lives,” Irina Petrovna, who looked into the office, who looked into the office, is dreamily. - We are terrorized with these checks. There is no time to work with children the way you want. There is a problem with a personnel nature: people of our age will go away, but youth (to school) does not go. There is no housing, there is no worthy salary. The salary is reduced-let them not lie there! If you look like this, the state is not at all worried about the future of our country.

The fact that the state is worried about the future of other countries, teachers are very unhappy.

“Crimea was returned - well done, this is our border! This is the Black Sea Fleet! We would be bitten by the Americans, the Japanese, who else is there ... "

- I can no longer listen to Ukraine! - admits Albina Nikolaevna. - Now I begin the impression that, so that I do not think about the daily bread, they show it ... Yes, I sympathized with the Donbass! But when we also have people behind the poverty line, and most of them ... And there are children at school, who have nothing to pay for a bun. They say, they sent (to the Donbass.- NT ) there are so many, 78 columns, drugs, textbooks, and so on ... How much this can continue? But you don't need to? We are offended.

Vladimir Putin in the village of Kasimovo, Leningrad Region, May 16, 2015

- And what do you think about Syria?

“It's scary ...” the head teacher says almost in a whisper. - It's just that Afghanistan is still in my head ...

Quiet Marina Viktorovna calls the phone every five minutes. She dumps: they call from the bank, the loan payment is expired. The thesis about a good and bad policy in this conversation is not lined up. Rather, everything is bad. Nevertheless, teachers are expressed actively to Putin's support.

- All Putin is supported - there is no alternative. Where is the alternative? Medvedev? - Albina Nikolaevna, also a member of "United Russia" gets excited. - It was already. Who else? No, how to say ... strength. I do not see strong nature. And he (Putin) is a strong nature. Well, then ... we are used to it.

But to support and not see alternatives are still different things.

- I, like any person, support him, because I need peace. All! - clarifies the school principal. - There will be a war - I do not need a dress, nothing ...

The President explains Albina Nikolaevna, “is the right position by security”:

- Crimea returned - well done, this is our border! This is the Black Sea Fleet! The Americans, the Japanese, who else there would have bitten us from there ... I will tell you as a physicist: a nuclear war if there is, it doesn’t seem enough to everyone. We are taught the gas masks to put on ... what gas masks? If the chemical war or bacterial is the end. Infection - and there will be all people with disabilities, freaks, that's all. I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid of provocations. I'm afraid of bacterial weapons. I understand that this is scary. Our task is to prevent war. And financial problems are less important.

The fact that Putin “protects us from the war” says a variety of people. At first, this seems to be an attempt to somehow explain, including for himself, what is our president good. In fact, if you clarify: "Are you really afraid that the Americans will attack us?" - Everyone answers the question with a question, surprised at naivety: “Yes! And you are not? "

... when you support, no matter what

“So I get 35 thousand,” the pretty, under a meter of eighty blonde 26 years old. - And everyone thinks that the cops have a salary of 80-100 thousand. Well, where did you get that kind of money? It would be okay to be normalized working day, on Saturday, nobody would have pulled me and at night they would not raise me to all sorts of anxiety, to the losses. And for our time, 35 is generally money about nothing.

Katya is a senior police lieutenant. The decision to go to the authorities took at the school: “The idiot's dream came true,” he says. Now Katya is on maternity leave, therefore, probably, she was overwhelmed about the life of employees of the Internal Affairs Directorate: most of the benefits were deprived of them, small salaries, and prices are rising, as elsewhere. Katya worries how to lose weight after childbirth and how to take a mortgage. The rest is not enough.

- Well, at all, to be honest,
On ... t, what is happening in Ukraine. The only thing is insulting when our employees go there, anesthetized, and then return to zinc coffins. About Syria - all this does not care. We have work within our country. The guys were sent and sent to Chechnya and Dagestan, which belong to our country. There still, although it doesn’t sound loudly now - riots are still killing. But Syria or there something else-these countries, you know, are somehow parallel.

Nevertheless, the “parallel” foreign policy activity of Russia, it turns out, climbed into the pocket to the police directly:

- We used to have bonuses. Here, for example, saved a certain amount of money, and it was always a good amount. At the end of the year, it was distributed to all police officers. And sometimes it turned out thousands of 20 bonuses. One year we had a decent prize - about 50 thousand per person. Now this is not. Then we had an Olympics, the money went there, then we have Crimea, we must help Crimea, then Donbass, now Syria ...

The conversation is interrupted by Katya's son - he woke up and burst into tears. Mom already dreams of how he will give Kostom to the kindergarten at a year and a half and will go to work, "again to the craftsmen."

- I didn’t like Putin, I don't like it. Like the President. What is happening in the country! - Captain the police captain, who is time to feed the child, turns the conversation without five minutes. - Why support it?

Belaza driver Andrei compares the situation in the country with affairs at his enterprise:

-We had the head of vehicles of a bad carrier, we thought, as if rather they were removed or changed. There was nowhere worse. And they put another person - so ten times worse! And now I think the same about Putin.

Andrei's younger children - two -year -old twins - have already gone to the kindergarten. The elders graduated from school, his daughter is studying at the university, the son at the motor transport college. It is impossible to find the head of a large family of the house. On weekdays, he leads on the coal section of his “BelAZ”, on weekends he is taxing in foliage. Salaries cut into a crisis of 15 thousand rubles. Andrei is not enough to keep four children.

- But in general, what Putin does - well done. Well, in foreign policy, at least. And in domestic politics, no one will remember him with a good word - a familiar argument.

- Why is well done in foreign policy?

- Well ... Crimea, I don't know ... This is a lot of money. Personally, I would not need him at all. Excess costs! It’s the same, consider it, nevertheless, it is not very much unfinished from us, but we also have a Moscow company, all the money that we will earn, go there.

- And the fact that Russia began to send planes to Syria, bomb there?

- This is me also negatively. They are there with each other, and we climb somewhere! For what? I do not support. And the funds are all again coming from us. Now they say right on TV: once, they say, we gnawed in Syria, we will need to restore it.

Andrei is constantly looking at the phone glued with tape - he is afraid to skip the application. Andrei’s tariff, “like everyone else”: take to the neighboring village along the pits of the “repaired” road - 200 rubles, ride people around the village - 50.

“But you said that Putin’s foreign policy approve ...

“I don’t know how I approve ... But so well done, he is already confused ... that everyone respects him in the world, not for nothing he does it.” But that he intervenes everywhere - I do not approve.

-Well, still, here you don’t like the crisis, Syria, Ukraine-it all depends on Putin, but still supports him ...

“Not ... Well, somehow I don’t know ...” Andrey is completely embarrassed. - Anyway ... it seems that there is nothing to support him, but at the same time I support it. I am like a person at all ... I like it!

... not forever

Joseph Dmitrievich Sudakov at all meetings of the village council and meetings with officials go with a recorder. All calls on his old phone are recorded. Sudakov is proud of the number of evidence collected about the extension of the local budget, "not in especially large sizes, however, but simply in large ones." He believes that in the near future all this will be useful to him and "there will be a lot of landings."

“Now this Syria is getting worse and worse,” says Joseph Dmitrievich. - People will soon get tired of endure, and it will begin ...

Actually, people in foliage are very patient. Everyone in a conversation can give an example from personal experience: there, there were times worse - and survived, but now, "thank God, not yet like in the nineties." True, the 53-year-old builder Valery still expects cardinal changes, and even knows when this will happen:

- People will put up until the intelligence of the West creates the leader of the new. And as soon as she creates, people will not put up. People are tired!

Valery has two adult daughters - the eldest lives in Moscow, the youngest - in the Koltsovo science city near Novosibirsk. Before the crisis, Valery and his wife took a mortgage to move closer to the youngest. Now it is not possible to implement family plans “painlessly”: the company where Valery works is delaying salaries. He does not believe in the durability of the current government.

-That is, if there is some kind of alternative to Putin, then people ...

Valery does not allow the question:

- Immediately! Now, well, there is no one, however, and if there is some kind of alternative, then people will immediately follow the person who will be an alternative, yes! And Putin will immediately call him and will call him in any way!

Photo: Olga Dmitrieva

* “Islamic State” (ISIS) - a group prohibited in Russia as a terrorist.

Window to the world

How do the Russians learn political news, the New Times* found out

*TOP of regular news and socio-political programs that go out in the interval
from 18:00 to 24:00, television season 2014/2015, data provided by TNS Russia

** Rating, % - the average audience of the program, expressed in % of the entire target audience

Program

Time (Channel One)

News of the week

Sunday "Time".
Information and analytical
Vesti program. (20:00)

Man and the law

Central television

Today. The final program

News on Saturday (20:00)

Sunday evening
With Vladimir Solovyov

Evening news

Rating**

6.6

5.9

5.7

4.8

4.7

4.5

4.2

4.1

4.0

3.7

Photo: AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky

“About Syria - all this is do not care. We have work within our country. The guys both sent and send to Chechnya and Dagestan, which belong to our country "

Themes

The main thing

Vladimir Putin in a cafe in the village of Dombay, the Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia, January 2, 2015

Photo: Reuters/Eduard Korniyenko