Sociologists, out!

At the same time, Levada Center’s website was hacked into and ceased to function. It is not ruled out that this combination is aimed at paralyzing the center in the last weeks of the election campaign, on the day of elections, and in the next few days.

Presumably, when the election-related passions subside, a court may satisfy Levada Center’s appeal against being put on the list of foreign agents. In that case, negative international repercussions can also be minimized. The center’s director Lev Gudkov has already said they are going to appeal because sociologists with a stigma of “foreign agents” cannot possibly work in Russia. People will just be afraid to answer questions perhaps for fear of being misinterpreted by foreign special services.

I want to emphasize that residents of Russia are afraid to answer any questions of pollsters – at least those connected with politics one way or another. In particular, it is difficult to imagine that an ordinary Russian’s heart will not miss a beat if he is asked to express his attitude to President Vladimir Putin and his policies. In all probability, one must possess some civil courage today to be able to answer “negative” or “very negative.” Or what will a Russian say in answer to the question about the annexation of Crimea and the Russian policy towards Ukraine? For propaganda is trying day and night to persuade them that Russia is in fact waging a war and is surrounded by enemies from all sides, and if you do not support Putin’s policy of “regaining Crimea” and “helping our compatriots in the Donbas,” you are a traitor, not a patriot, of Russia.

All the assurances of sociologists that surveys are strictly anonymous and the respondents’ data will in no way be disclosed will far from always convince the Russian man in the street, scared by the decades-long Soviet era, even if they are real. To crown it all, it was announced that the next census of population would also cease to be anonymous, when you will have to put down all your personal data, including the tax code, into the census questionnaire. Should this innovation be really introduced, it is very likely that more people will try to dodge the next census, to be out of harm’s way, – even more than in the previous census which many experts say produced non-representative and even falsified results. This opinion is widely spread because a considerable part of Russians did not take part in that census – often not against their free will but because the census was poorly organized. I cannot say whether the 2010 census results overrate or underrate the population of Russia and to what extent that census was less credible than that of 2002 which, incidentally, was also far from being ideal.

It does credit to Levada Center that its pollsters were not afraid to conduct politically sensitive surveys, including some on the Ukrainian question. But, on the eve of September 18, the authorities are concerned, of course, over polls about the elections, not about Ukraine. And the assault on Levada Center is perhaps connected with the fear that polls data and the official results of voting may considerably differ, with polls data being not in favor of the pro-governmental candidates. We know on the example of Ukraine, Georgia, and some other countries that such a difference between the data of polls, especially exit polls, and the official results may lead to revolutionary explosion.

To tell the truth, Levada Center caused no inconvenience to the authorities, for that matter, in the previous years. On the contrary, the results of its polls immediately before the elections were, as a rule, the closest to the officially announced ones. In the conditions when some experts believe that up to 20 percent of votes in the Russian elections may be redistributed (it is clear in favor of which party and which candidates) as a result of rigging, there can be two explanations of this phenomenon. Either rigging is not as widespread as some liberal figures claim (it is hard to believe it, but, after all, things do happen), or Levada Center and other sociological centers, quite loyal to the Kremlin, receive sort of instructions from the presidential administration on the eve of the elections, which furnish target figures from which they should not deviate too much when publishing the results of pre-election surveys and exit polls.

Speaking of the occupation of Crimea, Putin claimed that, before the “little green men” were moved there, the Russian president’s administration had conducted a confidential public opinion poll on the peninsula. In all probability, this slip of the tongue is true to fact in the sense that Putin’s administration really conducts confidential, i.e. not-to-be published, sociological surveys before presidential and parliamentary elections and about other pressing issues. Then, knowing the results of these polls, the Kremlin determines the desired results of the elections and decides on the scope and mechanism of rigging. There is no proof of this so far, but the scheme looks plausible enough.

Be that as it may, the Levada Center story shows that Putin and his team have decided to make themselves safe this time so that there is not even a shadow of a Maidan after the elections. For this time, after a long pause, voters are electing MPs not only on the basis of party lists, but also in single-seat constituencies. And what if exit polls will show that the United Russia’s single-seat candidate has garnered far fewer votes than it was officially announced and, in reality, an opposition candidate, out of favor with the government, has won? This can trigger a Maidan, even if it is of a local scale. And now Levada Center either will be unable to conduct polls or will have to conduct them very cautiously, watching the reaction of the government. And this will be a warning to all the other sociologists.

Boris Sokolov is a Moscow-based political journalist