Levada Center
Encyclopedia
Levada Center is a Russian independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research
organisation. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology
Yuri Levada
(1930—2006). Levada Center traces back its history to 1987 when VCIOM
was founded, originally headed by Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya
. Being one of the largest Russian research companies, Levada Center regularly conducts its own and commissioned sociological and marketing researches.
It is carrying out public opinion—and research polls in such fields as sociology, economy, psychology, and marketing. With an approximate of 50 people working in the Moscow office, 80 fieldwork supervisors in the regional branches and about 3000 trained interviewers, it is today one of the largest full-service agencies in Russia.
The key personnel are the founders of the company who started their research programs at VCIOM and now continue them in the Levada Center. From 2003 until 2006 the director was Yuri Levada
. In December, 2006 Lev Dmitrievitsch Gudkov
was assigned to this post.
The basic research departments are:
and the Baltic states. Their partners and customers are non-profit Russian and international companies. The Center publishes the sociological journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald.
The Levada Center is a member of the international associations ESOMAR
and ОIRОМ. Experts of the Levada Center are constant members in conferences and round table discussions such as the Liberal Mission Foundation (Фонд «Либеральная миссия»), the Carnegie Moscow Center
, The Gorbachev Foundation, Memorial
, Public Lectures of Polit.ru Project (Публичные лекции Полит.ру), the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Московская высшая школа социальных и экономических наук), the Public Center of A.D. Sakharov (Общественный центр им. А. Д. Сахарова) and Khodorkovsky
Readings (Ходорковские чтения).
Articles, interviews and expert opinions published by the Levada Center regularly appear in domestic and foreign mass-media such as Kommersant
, Vedomosti
, The Economist
, The Wall Street Journal
, The New York Times
, etc. Other publications in scientific and socially political press within Russia include Pro et Contra, Otechestvenie zapiski (Отечественные записки), Social Studies and the Present (Общественные науки и современность), The New Times
, Ogoniok and Novaya Gazeta
.
The Center continues to carry out research programs, they have developed in the framework of VTsIOM. Publishes a journal "Journal of Public Opinion" (from 1993 to 2003, the editorial staff of The Messenger has created and published the magazine "Monitoring of public opinion: the economic and social change"- the name of one of the major research programs, developed under the supervision of Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya
The Levada Center is included in the list of independent analytical centers of Europe, published by Freedom House
. Data published by the Levada Center has been used for The Economist
Special Report on Russia. In collaboration with the Levada Center, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty weekly broadcasts the show Public Opinion (Общественное мнение: граждане России у микрофона Радио Свобода).
In 1988, the research team of now Levada Center conducted the first study of consumer preferences in the USSR. At present, the Center does a wide range of marketing and sociological research using different research techniques.
, Boris Grushin, Valery Rutgajzer and Yuri Levada
and was the first organisation to carry out representative mass surveys within the Russian population. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, now the honorary president of Levada Center headed VCIOM in 1987–1992. Yuri Levada in 1992–2003.
In August 2003 the Ministry for Property Relations decided to introduce government officials in the board of directors which was to result in control over the work of the Centre by government structures and individuals who had had no part in VCIOM research work before.
In return all employees of VCIOM quit their jobs and continued their work under a new name, VCIOM-A. After the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation forbid to use this name, the organisation was renamed into the Levada Analytical Center (Levada Center).
The Levada Center has continued the research programs, started by its collective in the 1990s–2000s. One of the largest projects done by the Levada Center is the study "The Soviet Person" (Homo Soveticus, Russian: Советский человек). Specialists used the monitoring technique in different surveys to identify the main trends in the social development of Russia's society over the past 15 years.
— the first professor to teach sociology
at Moscow State University
. During the political thaw initiated by Nikita Khrushchev
, Levada was allowed to carry out limited surveys of public opinion. In one lecture, Levada had asserted that tanks could not change ideologies, a reference to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
in 1968. Yet, his first conflict with those in power came from a survey asserting that few actually read Pravda
s notoriously longwinded editorials; and Pravda quickly and bitterly denounced the sociologist. In 1972, his institute was closed down during a Brezhnev
-era purge of some 200 sociologists from research institutes and universities.
Levada was reinstated by reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
as glasnost
was under way. He went on to establish the All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) in 1987, which was renamed All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion after the end of Soviet Union
in 1991.
In an interview Yuri Levada http://www.svoboda.org/programs/fr/2004/fr.011104.asp refers to Tatyana Zaslavskaya
and Boris Grushin as the founders of VCIOM in 1987. He states that he was invited by them to join VCIOM.
site at http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dmiguse/Russian/polls.html.
Although VTsIOM received no budget money and funded itself with private-sector polling contracts from the breakdown of Soviet Union in 1992 to 2003, Levada had not addressed the fact that the polling agency remained a state-owned agency on paper.
This allowed the state to employ a legal technicality and appoint a new board of directors in September 2003, composed mainly of its officials, to oversee the work of VTsIOM. None of VTsIOM's sociologists were among these government appointments. Before that, VCIOM had conducted over 1,000 polls http://www.ng.ru/politics/2003-08-06/1_choice.html.
Levada stated that the Kremlin move was aimed in part at silencing growing public opposition to the Chechen war
in the election season. (In recent years, the Kremlin has employed similar legal maneuvers to take over the independent NTV
, TV-6 and TVS networks.)
After VTsIOM's management was forcibly changed, Levada and some of his colleagues quit their jobs (and, moreover, the equipment and resources that they had used for 15 years) to start up a new private polling agency, which they named Analytical Service VTsIOM (or VTsIOM-A). VTsIOM-A was renamed Yuri Levada Analytical Center (or Levada Center) in March 2004. There is conflicting data about response from other Russian sociologists to the breakup of VCIOM. Some sources http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/5/levin.html report that every sociologist left with Levada. Others claims they were silent, except for Grushin. http://www.mn.ru/issue.php?2003-32-15.
The Property Ministry, which was reorganizing VTsIOM on behalf of the government, welcomed the researchers' departure. "Now they [VTsIOM-A] can really become independent, step into the market and live according to the laws of the market, which include paying taxes and competition", said a ministry spokesman.
The new director of VCIOM is Valery Fedorov (Валерий Федоров), then a political scientist in his late twenties with no experience in public opinion polls, formerly a director of Center of Political Trends (Центр политической конъюнктуры).
Many sources refer to him as a member of the presidential administration http://weblite.imbg.ru/ideas/my/43.html, but this is not confirmed on his curriculum vitae http://www.rosbalt.ru/2003/09/13/118515.html. He has assembled a new VCIOM staff, most of whom are little-known.
Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center http://www.carnegie.ru/en/ (established by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
) who used VTsIOM statistics in her recent book Putin's Russia, said she was pleased Levada was trying to maintain the independence of his research.Oksana Yablokova, "Levada Leaves VTsIOM for VTsIOM", The Moscow Times, September 10, 2003. This article is cached by a Yabloko
website at http://www.eng.yabloko.ru/Publ/2003/PAPERS/9/030910_2_mt.html.
When asked about VCIOM management change during his visit to Columbia University
in the United States
in September 2003, Russian president Vladimir Putin
was supportive of the change in management http://www.vesti7.ru/news?id=2963. Levada reportedly claimed that Putin disrupted at least three attempts to convince him that his approval rating is considerably lower than widely reported. http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/5/levin.html.
Some already completed studies:
Current and most important studies:
Social research
Social research refers to research conducted by social scientists. Social research methods may be divided into two broad categories:* Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analysis of many cases to create valid and reliable...
organisation. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
Yuri Levada
Yuri Levada
Yuri Alexandrovich Levada was a well known Russian sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the Levada Center.-Scientific activity to 1988:In 1952 Levada graduated from the Philosophical faculty of the Moscow State University....
(1930—2006). Levada Center traces back its history to 1987 when VCIOM
VCIOM
All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, VTsIOM, [established in 1987; till 1992 – All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion] is the oldest polling institution in the post-Soviet space and is one of the leading sociological and market research companies in Russia.-General...
was founded, originally headed by Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya is a Russian economic sociologist, a theoretician of perestroika, an author and co-author of several books on economy of the Soviet Union and in sociology of the countryside and a large number of research papers...
. Being one of the largest Russian research companies, Levada Center regularly conducts its own and commissioned sociological and marketing researches.
Structure
The non-governmental organisation Levada Analytical Center was originally formed in 1987–1988 and called the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM). Due to some internal changes it was re-established in 2003 as an independent non-governmental organization.It is carrying out public opinion—and research polls in such fields as sociology, economy, psychology, and marketing. With an approximate of 50 people working in the Moscow office, 80 fieldwork supervisors in the regional branches and about 3000 trained interviewers, it is today one of the largest full-service agencies in Russia.
The key personnel are the founders of the company who started their research programs at VCIOM and now continue them in the Levada Center. From 2003 until 2006 the director was Yuri Levada
Yuri Levada
Yuri Alexandrovich Levada was a well known Russian sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the Levada Center.-Scientific activity to 1988:In 1952 Levada graduated from the Philosophical faculty of the Moscow State University....
. In December, 2006 Lev Dmitrievitsch Gudkov
Lev Gudkov
Lev Dmitrievich Gudkov is a Russian sociologist, director of the analytical Levada Center and editor-in-chief of the journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald.-Scientific activity:...
was assigned to this post.
The basic research departments are:
- Department of Socio-political Researches (Head – Boris DubinBoris DubinBoris Vladimirovich Dubin is a Russian sociologist, and a translator for English, French, Spanish, Latin American and Polish literature. Dubin is the head of department of sociopolitical researches at the Levada Center and the assistant to Lev Gudkov, editor-in-chief of the sociological journal...
)
- Department of Living Standards Research (Head – Marina Krasilnikova)
- Department of Qualitative Researches (Head – Alexey Levinson)
- Department of Social and Economic Researches (Head – Lyudmila Khakhulina)
- Department of Marketing Researches (Head – Yuri Poletaev)
Ratings
- According to rating agency Expert for 2008 Levada Center is in the top 30 leading research companies in Russia
- In July 2009, the Association of Regional sociological centers "Group 7 / 89" released the results of the fifth wave of the annual study "Top Research Companies - 2008", in which the Levada Center took second place.
Organisation
The Levada Center has partner relationships with various regional research centers in Russia, the CISCommonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
and the Baltic states. Their partners and customers are non-profit Russian and international companies. The Center publishes the sociological journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald.
The Levada Center is a member of the international associations ESOMAR
European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research
The European Society for Opinion and Market Research is a world association for market, social and opinion researchers.Founded in 1948, ESOMAR began as a regional association within Europe...
and ОIRОМ. Experts of the Levada Center are constant members in conferences and round table discussions such as the Liberal Mission Foundation (Фонд «Либеральная миссия»), the Carnegie Moscow Center
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...
, The Gorbachev Foundation, Memorial
Memorial (society)
Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
, Public Lectures of Polit.ru Project (Публичные лекции Полит.ру), the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Московская высшая школа социальных и экономических наук), the Public Center of A.D. Sakharov (Общественный центр им. А. Д. Сахарова) and Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a Russian prisoner, considered by some - such as Amnesty International - to have been imprisoned for political reasons, jailed until 2016 and a former Russian oligarch and businessman...
Readings (Ходорковские чтения).
Articles, interviews and expert opinions published by the Levada Center regularly appear in domestic and foreign mass-media such as Kommersant
Kommersant
Kommersant is a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia. , the circulation was 131,000.- History :The newspaper was initially published in 1909, and it was closed down following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the introduction of censorship in 1917.In 1989, with the onset of press...
, Vedomosti
Vedomosti
Vedomosti is a Russian language business daily. It is a joint venture between Dow Jones, the Financial Times and Sanoma, publishers of The Moscow Times....
, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, etc. Other publications in scientific and socially political press within Russia include Pro et Contra, Otechestvenie zapiski (Отечественные записки), Social Studies and the Present (Общественные науки и современность), The New Times
The New Times (Russia)
The New Times, or Novoye Vremya , is a Russian language magazine in Russia established in 1943 in the Soviet Union. It is a small, liberal, independent Russian weekly news magazine, publishing for Russia and Armenia. During the Soviet times it followed the official line...
, Ogoniok and Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
.
The Center continues to carry out research programs, they have developed in the framework of VTsIOM. Publishes a journal "Journal of Public Opinion" (from 1993 to 2003, the editorial staff of The Messenger has created and published the magazine "Monitoring of public opinion: the economic and social change"- the name of one of the major research programs, developed under the supervision of Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya is a Russian economic sociologist, a theoretician of perestroika, an author and co-author of several books on economy of the Soviet Union and in sociology of the countryside and a large number of research papers...
The Levada Center is included in the list of independent analytical centers of Europe, published by Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
. Data published by the Levada Center has been used for The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
Special Report on Russia. In collaboration with the Levada Center, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty weekly broadcasts the show Public Opinion (Общественное мнение: граждане России у микрофона Радио Свобода).
In 1988, the research team of now Levada Center conducted the first study of consumer preferences in the USSR. At present, the Center does a wide range of marketing and sociological research using different research techniques.
History
The Levada Center was formed in 1987–88 and was called the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) at that time. It was established under the direction of Tatyana ZaslavskayaTatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya is a Russian economic sociologist, a theoretician of perestroika, an author and co-author of several books on economy of the Soviet Union and in sociology of the countryside and a large number of research papers...
, Boris Grushin, Valery Rutgajzer and Yuri Levada
Yuri Levada
Yuri Alexandrovich Levada was a well known Russian sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the Levada Center.-Scientific activity to 1988:In 1952 Levada graduated from the Philosophical faculty of the Moscow State University....
and was the first organisation to carry out representative mass surveys within the Russian population. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, now the honorary president of Levada Center headed VCIOM in 1987–1992. Yuri Levada in 1992–2003.
In August 2003 the Ministry for Property Relations decided to introduce government officials in the board of directors which was to result in control over the work of the Centre by government structures and individuals who had had no part in VCIOM research work before.
In return all employees of VCIOM quit their jobs and continued their work under a new name, VCIOM-A. After the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation forbid to use this name, the organisation was renamed into the Levada Analytical Center (Levada Center).
The Levada Center has continued the research programs, started by its collective in the 1990s–2000s. One of the largest projects done by the Levada Center is the study "The Soviet Person" (Homo Soveticus, Russian: Советский человек). Specialists used the monitoring technique in different surveys to identify the main trends in the social development of Russia's society over the past 15 years.
Founding of VTsIOM
The founding and development of the agency was intertwined with the career of its founder, Yuri LevadaYuri Levada
Yuri Alexandrovich Levada was a well known Russian sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the Levada Center.-Scientific activity to 1988:In 1952 Levada graduated from the Philosophical faculty of the Moscow State University....
— the first professor to teach sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
at Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
. During the political thaw initiated by Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
, Levada was allowed to carry out limited surveys of public opinion. In one lecture, Levada had asserted that tanks could not change ideologies, a reference to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...
in 1968. Yet, his first conflict with those in power came from a survey asserting that few actually read Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
s notoriously longwinded editorials; and Pravda quickly and bitterly denounced the sociologist. In 1972, his institute was closed down during a Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
-era purge of some 200 sociologists from research institutes and universities.
Levada was reinstated by reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
as glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
was under way. He went on to establish the All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) in 1987, which was renamed All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion after the end of Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1991.
In an interview Yuri Levada http://www.svoboda.org/programs/fr/2004/fr.011104.asp refers to Tatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya
Tatyana Zaslavskaya is a Russian economic sociologist, a theoretician of perestroika, an author and co-author of several books on economy of the Soviet Union and in sociology of the countryside and a large number of research papers...
and Boris Grushin as the founders of VCIOM in 1987. He states that he was invited by them to join VCIOM.
Breakup and founding of Levada-Center
VTsIOM became widely respected for its objectivity and professionalism among academics and journalists in both the Soviet Union and the West. In the 1990s, the agency's polls gained a reputation for being very reliable.A free-access, English-language assessment of the accuracy of poll ratings published by VCIOM throughout the 1996 presidential and parliamentary election year is offered by an Indiana UniversityIndiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
site at http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dmiguse/Russian/polls.html.
Although VTsIOM received no budget money and funded itself with private-sector polling contracts from the breakdown of Soviet Union in 1992 to 2003, Levada had not addressed the fact that the polling agency remained a state-owned agency on paper.
This allowed the state to employ a legal technicality and appoint a new board of directors in September 2003, composed mainly of its officials, to oversee the work of VTsIOM. None of VTsIOM's sociologists were among these government appointments. Before that, VCIOM had conducted over 1,000 polls http://www.ng.ru/politics/2003-08-06/1_choice.html.
Levada stated that the Kremlin move was aimed in part at silencing growing public opposition to the Chechen war
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
in the election season. (In recent years, the Kremlin has employed similar legal maneuvers to take over the independent NTV
NTV Russia
NTV is a Russian television channel. As a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most, it was a pioneer in the post-Soviet independent television media, but was later taken over by state-owned Gazprom.- History :...
, TV-6 and TVS networks.)
After VTsIOM's management was forcibly changed, Levada and some of his colleagues quit their jobs (and, moreover, the equipment and resources that they had used for 15 years) to start up a new private polling agency, which they named Analytical Service VTsIOM (or VTsIOM-A). VTsIOM-A was renamed Yuri Levada Analytical Center (or Levada Center) in March 2004. There is conflicting data about response from other Russian sociologists to the breakup of VCIOM. Some sources http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/5/levin.html report that every sociologist left with Levada. Others claims they were silent, except for Grushin. http://www.mn.ru/issue.php?2003-32-15.
The Property Ministry, which was reorganizing VTsIOM on behalf of the government, welcomed the researchers' departure. "Now they [VTsIOM-A] can really become independent, step into the market and live according to the laws of the market, which include paying taxes and competition", said a ministry spokesman.
The new director of VCIOM is Valery Fedorov (Валерий Федоров), then a political scientist in his late twenties with no experience in public opinion polls, formerly a director of Center of Political Trends (Центр политической конъюнктуры).
Many sources refer to him as a member of the presidential administration http://weblite.imbg.ru/ideas/my/43.html, but this is not confirmed on his curriculum vitae http://www.rosbalt.ru/2003/09/13/118515.html. He has assembled a new VCIOM staff, most of whom are little-known.
Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center http://www.carnegie.ru/en/ (established by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...
) who used VTsIOM statistics in her recent book Putin's Russia, said she was pleased Levada was trying to maintain the independence of his research.Oksana Yablokova, "Levada Leaves VTsIOM for VTsIOM", The Moscow Times, September 10, 2003. This article is cached by a Yabloko
Yabloko
The Russian United Democratic Party "Yabloko" The Russian United Democratic Party "Yabloko" The Russian United Democratic Party "Yabloko" (Russian: Росси́йская объединённая демократи́ческая па́ртия «Я́блоко» Rossiyskaya obyedinyonnaya demokraticheskaya partiya "Yabloko"; is a Russian social...
website at http://www.eng.yabloko.ru/Publ/2003/PAPERS/9/030910_2_mt.html.
When asked about VCIOM management change during his visit to Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in September 2003, Russian president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
was supportive of the change in management http://www.vesti7.ru/news?id=2963. Levada reportedly claimed that Putin disrupted at least three attempts to convince him that his approval rating is considerably lower than widely reported. http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/5/levin.html.
Research
The research of Levada Center is based on regular all-Russia public opinion surveys.Some already completed studies:
- Homo Soveticus (Russian: Советский человек). 5 waves of all-Russia public opinion surveys in 1989, 1994, 1999, 2003 and 2008.
- Monitoring of Electoral Preferences in Russia, in 1993, 1995–1996, 1999–2000, 2003–2004, 2007–2008.
- Education program in workplaces on HIV / AIDS in Russia, commissioned by the International Labour Organization and the U.S. Department of Labor, 2005
- "Youth of Russia", 2005-2007
- "Western values and democracy", 2006
- "The relation of population to the police reforms", 2007
- "The European project on school studies on alcohol and drugs. ESPAD-2007
- "Opinion of HIV-positive mothers on the experience of receiving health and social care", commissioned by UNICEF, 2008
- "Reading in Russia - 2008. Trends and Issues. ", 2008
- "Russian Myths", 2008
- "Awareness of Russian citizens on the activities of law enforcement", 2008
- "The problem of quality education and the installation of permanent education in contemporary Russia"
- "Monitoring of elections to the Moscow City Duma in October 2009"
- Voices from Russia: Society, Democracy, Europe, 2006.
- "The Problem of "Elits" in Contemporary Russia". 2005–2006.
- Voices from Russia: What the Russian Middle ClassMiddle classThe middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
Think about Their Own Country and about Europe, 2008. - International Social Survey Program (ISSP), since 1991.
- New Russia Barometer, in collaboration with Centre for the Study of Public Policy (University of StrathclydeUniversity of StrathclydeThe University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...
, University of AberdeenUniversity of AberdeenThe University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
), since 1991. - World Public Opinion international surveys.
Current and most important studies:
- International Programme for the Social Studies International Social Survey Program "(ISSP), since 1991
- International research Inra Hooper / RSW / NOP-World / GfKNOP, since 1991
- Monitoring social and economic changes, once in two months, starting from February 1993
- Regular participation in international studies World Public Opinion
- Index of consumer sentiment
- Index of social attitudes
- The index of financial sentiment (IFS, in collaboration with the Center of Macroeconomic Research of Sberbank of Russia)
External links
- Levada Center — website in Russian, English
- Community Levada Center — Levada Center on LivejournalLiveJournalLiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
- Levada Center: Public Opinion in Russia — Levada Center on FacebookFacebookFacebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
- Levada Center's annual yearbooks — The results of the Center's surveys available for downloading (in English, some in PDF-files).
- RussiaVotes.org — some results of Levada Center surveys in English
- The Yuri Levada Archives — the web-based, open-source project that serves as a clearing house for those interested in Yuri Levada scholarship and biographical methods of research. The Archives are part of the International Biography Initiative sponsored by the UNLV Center for Democratice Culture.
- Russia: Polling for Democracy, The Yuri Levada Analytical Center — NED Democracy Stories, September 2011.