#1 - JRL 7303
Vedomosti
August 27, 2003
BUSINESS IS MORE POWERFUL THAN THE PRESIDENT
according to a third of poll respondents
Who holds real power? Big business, organized crime, and Putin
Author: Alexei Nikolsky
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
A RECENT POLL DONE BY THE REGIONAL POLITICS RESEARCH AGENCY INDICATES THAT ONLY 15% OF CITIZENS BELIEVE REAL POWER IN RUSSIA BELONGS TO THE PRESIDENT. A THIRD OF RESPONDENTS BELIVE THE OLIGARCHS ARE RUNNING THE COUNTRY, AND A FIFTH OF RESPONDENTS NAMED ORGANIZED CRIME.
A recent poll done by the Regional Politics Research Agency (ARPI) indicates that only 15% of citizens believe real power in Russia belongs to the president. A third of respondents belive the oligarchs are running the country, and a fifth of respondents named the mafia. ARPI analysts say these opinions reflect the public's class hatred of the tycoons and their inflated image.
ARPI (a division of the ROMIR Monitoring agency) polled residents of 32 Russian regions. When asked who holds real power in Russia, 37% said big business and the oligarchs, 19% said organized crime, 15% said the president, 12% said the state bureaucracy, 5% said local authorities, 4% said the Duma, and 2% said regional leaders.
According to Mikhail Tarusin, head of socio-political research at ROMIR Monitoring, this is the third poll this year to ask the question of who really holds power in Russia; and the oligarchs have led the results every time, which shows how firmly entrenched these perceptions are among the public. A March poll revealed that 34% of respondents considered that the oligarchs were running the show, and in June the figure was 31%. In every poll, the president and organized crime have been in second or third place. In March, the figure for both the president and the mafia was 17%; in June the president got 18% compared to 17%; and in the August poll organized crime pulled ahead.
Tarusin says that impressions of the omnipotence of big business and organized crime have been shaped throughout the past decade, and the poll results are not surprising. However, he adds that we should bear in mind the abstract wording of the question - "power" as such, not a rating of confidence. (When ROMIR did a poll for us in July, 77% of respondents expressed dislike for the oligarchs.) Tarusin says that public confidence in the president remains stable. According to him, the reason why the oligarchs are so unpopular is not because people perceive them as omnipotent. The rich are disliked simply because they are rich. This, says Tarusin, is a sign of dangerous "lumpenization" among the public. It's no coincidence that in a parallel question about which issues cause most concern, 55% of respondents named poverty and 45% named inflation, while only 30% named crime and 17% named the weakness of the state.
Igor Bunin, director of the Political Techniques Center, offers a similar explanation for the poll results. In his view, societal differentiation in Russia is growing, and the public is becoming more aware of it; this is why the oligarchs have moved into first place among those believed to hold power - that is, those who are to blame for the situation.
Igor Jurgens, executive secretary of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), an organization that includes the nation's top business leaders, says the impression that oligarchs are omnipotent reflects the absence of civil society and self- awareness among the citizenry. Jurgens says: "If the people believe that power is held by oligarchs and organized crime, there's no point in them turning out to vote."
A presidential administration official who asked to remain anonymous says: "Public opinion has been shaped by the media, which has portrayed both us and the oligarchs in a rather distorted form in newspapers, movies, and books." When asked who actually does hold power, the official answered: "I don't know. Nobody, probably. But it's clear the power of the oligarchs should not be exaggerated."
(Translated by Gregory Malyutin)
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