"It is better not to stick out"

Over the past year, residents of Russia began to trust almost all state structures less - with the exception of President Vladimir Putin, the army and the FSB personally. Government ratings, State Duma and the Federation Council fell almost doubled. These are the data of the latest survey of public opinion organized by the Levada Center on September 23–26, 2016 according to the representative All-Russian sample of the urban and rural population. The study was conducted in 137 settlements of 48 regions of the country, among 1,600 people aged 18 years and older, at home for each respondent by a personal interview.

The results of a survey showing a general fall in the public confidence in the Russian authorities, including the head of state (from 80 percent a year ago to today 74 percent) and the return of all indicators to the period "before the annexation of Crimea" in an interview with Radio Liberty is commented by the analyst of the "Levada Center" Natalya Zorkaya :

- The President of Russia, judging by the results of the survey, is still perceived as a sacred figure?

-Putin, at least, is still at the very top of this pyramid, at a considerable distance from all other institutions of power and public institutions. The device of the current political regime, when all hopes focus on it, is preserved. Although some trend to reduce the level of approval and trust in the president is still planned.

- The fall in trust is observed to all institutions of power, but uneven. I drew attention to the first “Trinity”, “President - Army - State Security”, half of Russians or more trust them. And it turns out that anyone else. A scary picture?

-The picture is terrible, although not unexpected, because over the past year public opinion in a sense adequately reacts to what is happening in the country, and the role of law enforcement agencies, the FSB, and the army in the life of the country has long been evaluated as very high. In our common system, people are perceived exactly as this happens. On the other hand, high trust is shown primarily to the armed forces, because, of course, the postcrymic propaganda campaign of the "hostile environment" , "threats to attack Russia", "encroaching on the integrity of Russia", the entire repertoire of the people from televisions, of course, contributes to the fact that the institute of the army always enjoys quite high, as a non -neo -nor symbolical authority, becomes even higher.

- Such data indicate that the general mood of people is “if tomorrow is war”?

Military rhetoric responds in the mass consciousness

- Our data say that the fear of the war is rather quite high and people do not want war. Another thing is that the warlike rhetoric, which not only does not subside, but recently intensified significantly, finds a response in the mass consciousness. And all this, of course, is a continuation of the "postcrymic syndrome", an excited, aggressively -minded society, which perceives such constructions of perception of reality and interaction with the outside world. But this does not mean that people want it.

- Is it not strange that people perceive the army and state security as an imperious force, and not as exclusively executive bodies?

- Is it not strange that our people generally perceive the whole state - not as an organ that should serve society, but as what people should obey? Russians live in the vast majority of the model of adaptation to state pressure, control and violence. And in this situation, the intensifying law enforcement agencies, on the one hand, scare people, and on the other hand, people see that any attempt to some active confrontation of the current situation can be punishable. They see all repressive actions against individuals deciding on protests, for some confrontation, which one way or another cannot be forgotten about this, and are more and more afraid of this. And all the more they close in themselves and try to reduce contacts with the state, its structures.

That is, they live according to the model - it is better not to come into contact with anyone, it is better not to lean out, because it threatens with a punishment, threatens your own safety. Therefore, we now live in a country where, in principle, people trust and are responsible only for the narrowest circle of people close to them and are not able to take responsibility or decide on some actions that go out of this circle, which would help to somehow change their position. This is a matter of activity, readiness to act, solidarize and so on. That is - society is completely crushed.

- Sooner or later, disappointment in what is happening in the country and in different branches of the authorities, if you reason logically, can affect the ranking of the head of state?

Previously, still trust in the president was sky-high

- Yes. Actually, we are now beginning to capture this trend, for now, it may be early to draw conclusions, because the numbers are hesitating, but a certain decline is still noticeable. And then the trend is important! According to these latest data, if we look at the dynamics of trust in political institutions, then before, still trust in the president was sky-high and very strong, it did not repeat the dynamics of fluctuations in trust in other institutions of power. So it was until some period, to the "Tandem Putin - Medvedev", I would say so, until the moment they started to go synchronously, to change. And now we see a sharp fall, with the exception of confidence in the president, trust in all political institutions of the authorities - in parliament, the government, to the local authorities, and the governors. We measure the “trust” rating only twice a year, so these curves are conditional, and we can talk about some points at which we measure these changes.

Our trends in the approval of various institutions of the authorities of a more monitoring nature show absolutely the same tendency: there is a very strong fall in confidence as a government, to the Prime Minister, to the local authorities, to the governors. This is a disappointment, a return to reality in a sense, because people now very much began to note the consequences of the crisis, they talk about it, they are afraid of this. This return to reality after the annexation of Crimea happened last year, and it begins to affect, of course, to the attitude to all institutions.

- The Russian Orthodox Church is also perceived as a branch of power. So how to explain the fall in its popularity? The fact that, perhaps, the church began to intervene almost daily in all spheres of people's lives that do not concern it?

-I would see this all the same as some kind of common trend. All this goes in conjunction. If you pull out one institution of power from a general study, then the whole picture is not visible there.

- And if we talk about the bunch, back to all the upper lines of the rating. It looks like such an union of state "eagle, sword and cross", the situation, as at the very end of the 19th century, under Konstantin Pobedonostsev . It turns out that the country's population has been going on in a circle for centuries, in their ideas about those who are “sitting upstairs” and who should sit there?

- Partly yes, and it is also important to emphasize that this is a complete trust in the “top” you mentioned. This question is more difficult for us, in the survey there is also a degree of "partial trust". In general, our conditional “society” begins to feel that everything that happened in the field of politics, external and internal, ideology, the return of all these Soviet and, indeed, autocratic, totalitarian values, leads the country to a dead end. It seems to me that it is precisely the decline in complete confidence in general to all institutions of power. In fact, they began to trust everyone less. It’s just that only the army and law enforcement agencies stand out there - they have a less significant fall. But the general trend is one.

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  Alexander GOSTEV

  The editor of the RS information service, international observer, author and editor of the heading and podcast "Atlas of the World"

  Gosteva@rferl.org