Levada Center

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Levada Center
Motto From opinions to understanding
Formation 2003 (1987)
Type Research institute, think tank
Location Moscow, Russia
Key people Lev Gudkov, director
Tatyana Zaslavskaya, honorary president
Boris Dubin, head of socio-political department
Staff Approximately 60
Website www.levada.ru

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.

Contents

[edit] Structure

The non-governmental organisation Levada Analytical Center was originally formed in 1987-1988 and called the All-Soviet Public Opinion Research Centre (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. In December, 2006 Lev Dmitrievitsch Gudkov (Russian: Лев Дмитриевич Гудков) was assigned to this post.

The basic research departments are:

  • Department of Socio-political Researches (Head — Boris Dubin)
  • 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)

[edit] Organisation

The Levada Center has partner relationships with various regional research centers in Russia, the CIS and the Baltic states. Their partners and customers are non-profit Russian and international companies.[1] The Center publishes the sociological journal “The Russian Public Opinion Herald”.

The Levada Centre is a member of the international associations ESOMAR [2] and ОIRОМ. [3] Experts of the Levada Centre are constant members in conferences and round table discussions such as the “Liberal Mission Foundation” (Russian: фонд «Либеральная миссия»), the Carnegie Moscow Center (Russian: Московский Центр Карнеги), The Gorbachev Foundation (Russian: Горбачёв-фонд), Memorial (society) (Russian: общество «Мемориал»), “Public lectures of Polit.ru” project (Russian: Публичные лекции Полит.ру), the Moscow higher School of Social and Economic sciences (Russian: Московская высшая школа социальных и экономических наук), the Public Centre of A.D.Sakharov (Russian: общественный центр им. А. Д. Сахарова) and “Khodorkovsky readings” (Russian: Ходорковские чтения).

Articles, interviews and expert opinions published by the Levada Centre regularly appear in domestic and foreign mass-media such as: Kommersant (Russian: Коммерсантъ), Vedomosti (Russian: Ведомости), 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” (Russian: Оте́чественные записки), “Social studies and the present” (Russian: “Общественные науки и современность”), The New Times (Russia), Ogonyok (Russian: Огонёк) and Novaya Gazeta (Russian: Новая Газета).

The Levada Centre is included in the list of independent analytical centers of Europe, published by Freedom House. [4] Data published by the Levada Center has been used for The Economist Special Report on Russia. [5] In collaboration with the Levada Centre, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty weekly broadcasts the show “Public opinion” (Russian: “Общественное мнение: граждане России у микрофона Радио Свобода”). [6]

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.

[edit] History

The Levada Center was formed in 1987—88 and was called the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) at that time. It was established under the direction of Tatyana Zaslavskaya, 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"[7]. 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).[8]

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 Centre 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.

[edit] Founding of VTsIOM

The founding and development of the agency was intertwined with the career of its founder, Yuri Levada — 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 Union's 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. 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 [1] refers to Tatyana Zaslavskaya (Татьяна Заславская) and Boris Grushin (Борис Грушин) as the founders of VCIOM in 1987. He states that he was invited by them to join VCIOM.

[edit] 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.1

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 [2].

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 [3] report that every sociologist left with Levada. Others claims they were silent, except for Grushin. [4].

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 Valeriy 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 [5], but this is not confirmed on his curriculum vitae [6]. He has assembled a new VCIOM staff, most of whom are little-known.

Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center [7] (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.2

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 [8]. Levada reportedly claimed that Putin disrupted at least three attempts to convince him that his approval rating is considerably lower than widely reported. [9].

[edit] Research

The research of Levada Center is based on regular all-Russia public opinion surveys. Below several major research projects are listed:

  • 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.
  • Voices from Russia: Society, Democracy, Europe, 2006. [9]
  • "The Problem of "Elits" in Contemporary Russia". 2005—2006.
  • Voices from Russia: What the Russian Middle Class Think about Their Own Country and about Europe, 2008.[10]
  • International Social Survey Program (ISSP), since 1991.[11]
  • New Russia Barometer, in collaboration with Centre for the Study of Public Policy (University of Strathclyde, University of Aberdeen), since 1991.[12]
  • World Public Opinion international surveys.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Some partners of the Center on the official website
  2. ^ The Center's page on the ESOMAR website
  3. ^ The list of OIROM members
  4. ^ http://www.freedomhouse.hu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46
  5. ^ http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12628010
  6. ^ http://www.svobodanews.ru/archive/ru_bz_vox/latest/896/264.html
  7. ^ http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/5/levin.html
  8. ^ Radio Liberty
  9. ^ Society, Democracy, Europe
  10. ^ Russian "Middle Class" (PDF)
  11. ^ ISSP—Russia
  12. ^ New Russia Barometer

[edit] Notes

1 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 University site at [10].
2 Oksana Yablokova, " Levada Leaves VTsIOM for VTsIOM-,'" The Moscow Times, September 10, 2003. This article is cached by a Yabloko website at [11].

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levada_Center"