This is from Johnson's Russia List. The correspondent obviously wished for a
more negative view of the revolution.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
November 9, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
HOW RUSSIANS SEE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
By Vitaly GOLOVACHEV
The Russian Center for Studying Public Opinion (VTsIOM)
has conducted a sociological poll to find out Russians' opinion
about the 1917 October revolution. It is sometimes called a
coup. The responses are cited as a percentage from the total
number of those polled.
Question: What impact did the 1917 October Revolution have
on the life of the Russian people and the country's history?
A very positive impact 17%
Rather positive 32%
Rather negative 22%
Extremely negative 13%
I am in doubt 17%
Half of the respondents are sure that the Revolution made
a positive (sooner positive than other) impact on the Russian
history. They disagree with the opinion that it brought Russia
to the dead end of history. The fact that "Marxist-socialist
experiments" have not succeeded in any Eastern European
countries and the living standard in Cuba and North Korea is
extremely low does not change their opinion.
Issues of personal and public freedom, repressive nature
of the old regime and socialist wage-levelling are considered
of secondary importance. The important thing for many of those
polled is that they lived better under the Soviet regime and
they were "confident of their future." Drawbacks of the reform
period, neglect of social issues during the Yeltsin era,
chronic poverty on a large scale, deterioration of many
enterprises, permeating crime and corruption make a lot of
people, the elderly people in particular, yearn for the past.
These sentiments can be changed if the positive economic
and social tendencies gain ground. If the living standard of
the people suffering from poverty improves, their attitude to
the 1917 Revolution would change. Over a third of Russians who
have adjusted to the new conditions negatively assess the 1917
coup while 17% of the respondents who were in doubt at least
do not consider its impact positive.
******
