Sociological forecast

Russian legislation on non-profit organizations opens up opportunities for the complete arbitrariness of administrative bodies due to the blurry definition of the concepts of “political activity” and “foreign financing”. This is stated in a statement by the director of the Levada Center Lev Gudkov, published on the NGO website.

According to Gudkov, the actions of the Ministry of Justice lead to limiting the scientific ties of Russian scientists with foreign, which means "the prospect of further preservation of scientific archaic and degradation."

"For our country, for decades, divorced from the conditions for the development of modern social knowledge, which has been in the position of a deep intellectual province, this means the prospect of further conservation of scientific archaic and degradation. The misunderstanding of this threatens not just isolationism or chronic decrease in human and social capital in our country, but by turning it into a reserve of poor and aggressive population, which consoles itself with illusions national superiority and exclusiveness, ”emphasizes the director of the Levada Center.

Repressions threaten not only sociology, Gudkov notes. “They will finish with sociology - they will go to history, economics, genetics, physics and other sciences, as it was in the Stalin years,” he warns.

On September 5, the Ministry of Justice included the Levada Center in the list of "foreign agents" . If the Ministry of Justice’s decision cannot be challenged, Gudkov explained, it is possible that the levada center will have to be closed. “Because with such a stigma, conducting public opinion polls is simply impossible,” he explained.

The next day, Gudkov said that the Levada Center appealed to the court of the Ministry of Justice . "We will try to challenge this act, because it is to eliminate violations to abandon partnerships with foreign research centers and commercial firms. This is a very important source of money for us, which we then redistribute for our own research. We do not have other sources of financing," Gudkov said.

Studies of the Levada Center, some of which last more than 20 years, are funded by the distribution of funds from commercial orders, the head of the NPO noted. “If we refuse this, we will have to reduce the entire range of our research,” Gudkov emphasized. He noted that the studies, on the basis of which NPOs were recognized as an “ino -agent”, were not financed at the expense of the US Department of Defense and did not concern political issues.