#6588
#7 - JRL 6588
From: "Marian Dent" <mdent@pericles.ru>
Subject: RE: 6587 - Gerber & Mendelson/
Anti-Americanism
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002
I have to comment on the survey published in JRL 6587 from PONARS entitled "Theodore Gerber and Sarah Mendelson, Young, Educated, Urban -and Anti-American. Recent Survey Data from Russia." I was quite surprised to see such a thing coming out of PONARS. First, the title seems to be a bit disingenuous, as, when you start to read the article, you find that the mentioned group is not in fact anti-American, but is simply slightly less likely to be neutral than other groups.
But this doesn't bother me as much as the categories in the survey in the first place. According to the article,
"The survey asked respondents to indicate how they "relate" to five ethnic/national groups: Jews, Americans, Chechens, Gypsies, and Azeris. They were given five response categories:
1. With sympathy and interest
2. With no particular feelings-as to any other group
3. With annoyance, hostility
4. With mistrust, fear
5. Hard to say"
That seems to me to be a particularly odd group of questions to be asking about Americans, and a particularly odd group of ethnic/national groups to lump Americans with. I note that there is only one positive category on the survey "with sympathy and interest" and I have to say that, as an American expat, I also could not place my feelings about my fellow Americans in that category. Sympathy, 9/11 aside, does not appear to be an appropriate feeling towards citizens of a country as politically stable and well off as the US.
This is especially true if the respondents were asked to consider Americans alongside these other ethnic/national groups. To make the survey more representative, shouldn't at least the category of one other economically well-off and politically stable nationality have been included? We have no way of knowing whether these young educated Russians to whom the survey attributes negative feelings towards Americans are actually any more negative towards Americans than they are to nationals of Western Europe.
I don't claim to have any particular expertise in survey research, and I have no idea how these categories were picked, but I take issue with the conclusions that the article drew from this research. To me, this conclusion of anti-Americanism seems to be far overreaching the scope of the survey.
Marian Dent
Dean
Pericles American Business & Legal Education Project
10 Tverskaya Ul. #319
Moscow, 103009 Russia
(7-095) 292-5188
mdent@pericles.ru
www.pericles.ru
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