According to VTsIOM sociologists, 44 percent of citizens feel that the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church could seep over into the spiritual and moral life of the public. Another third believe that the church’s activities should be limited exclusively to religious and faith-based issues.

The number of people who saw the active participation of religious institutions in all spheres of public life, including politics, as acceptable ranked at only 16-17 percent.

“Those in favor of limiting the influence of the church to issues of faith were mostly young people, highly-educated people, and those who don’t trust church ministers,” said the report. “Conversely, proponents of political subjectivity on the part of the church included those who trust church ministers, respondents above pension age, those without higher education, and residents of rural areas.”

VTsIOM pointed out that the level of trust in church ministers has fallen 15 percent over the past two years.

The question of the church’s participation in Russian political life became widely discussed following the arrests of three members of the punk band Pussy Riot in March. Two weeks earlier, the group performed a protest song in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior criticizing Patriarch Kirill’s calls to vote for Vladimir Putin for president. If convicted, the women face up to seven years in prison; prosecutors are asking for three. The verdict in their case is set to be delivered on Friday.

Respondents had a variety of choices to define their opinion about the president’s achievements, but the most popular among those turned out to be “hard to answer” (47%) and “there were no achievements” (23%). The number of people in the latter category has fallen by 7% in the past three years.

Additionally, the number of people who don’t see any failures in Medvedev’s presidency has fallen – from 90% in 2009 to 73% now.

As for the positives, 7% of respondents said that the president’s social policies have been successful and another 6% said as much about his international policies. The rest of Medvedev’s cornerstone turned out to be considered less fruitful – 3% each of respondents named the battle against corruption or reforms of the security services, and only 1% each mentioned the battles against crime and corruption or the firing of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

As the newspaper Kommersant notes, only one out of every ten people polled by VTsIOM feels that Dmitri Medvedev, during his time in office, has “cared for the people” and asserted the idea of the revival of Russia as a global authority.

The poll was conducted from September 3-4 among 1600 people in 46 regions of Russia, with a margin of error no larger than 3.4%.

“What’s more important – democracy or order?” Moreover, how do Russians understand both of these concepts? These were the questions posed to 1600 Russian citizens in January by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), and published on April 12. The most eye-catching statistic is the overwhelming majority of respondents who say that order is more important for Russia than democracy – 72 percent, with 16 percent responding conversely. But that number is actually down from the last time VTsIOM conducted a similar survey in 2000, when 75 percent of Russians said they favored order, and 13 percent – democracy.

But the Russian perception of what “democracy” actually means has changed significantly in the past few years. Given a list of attributes to pick from to define it, significantly fewer respondents chose “freedom of speech/press/religion” as emblematic of democracy (down to 44 percent in 2010 from 55 percent in 2007). While 44 percent picked “economic prosperity” three years ago, only 28 percent picked it in 2010. Figures were also down for “strict lawfulness” (23 to 21 percent) and “order and stability” (25 to 19 percent). On the other hand, more people defined democracy as “the opportunity for everyone to do whatever they want” (10 percent in 2010 compared to 7 percent in 2007), “anarchy” (up to 6 percent from 3 percent), and, most notably, “empty chatter” (up to 11 percent from 5 percent).

Russian perceptions of “order” have changed significantly as well, but VTsIOM’s most recent data prior to this year is from 2000, making the comparisons less meaningful. In any case, compared to opinions in the year 2000, fewer Russians today define “order” as “political and economic stability of a country” (down to 41 from 46 percent), “a stop in the plundering and stripping of a country” (25 from 34 percent) or “the strict observation of laws” (24 from 35 percent). They do define it more often as “social defense of underprivileged segments of the population” (up to 29 from 25 percent) and “the opportunity for people to see their rights fulfilled” (25 from 16 percent).

For both definitions, more Russians were unsure of how to answer this year than in previous ones: 8 percent were unsure about “democracy” in 2010 compared to 5 percent in 2007, and 4 percent were unsure about “order” in 2010 compared to 2 percent in 2000.

As for demographics, those who favored order over democracy consisted primarily of the elderly, the uneducated, and low-income individuals. The majority of them are members of the Communist Party or the Kremlin-loyal opposition party A Just Russia. Democracy was valued more by 18-24 year olds, the highly educated, and wealthier individuals.

Overall, it appears that even if preferences for democracy are on the rise, positive views of what that word means are dwindling. But as the third of the population that still favors a Stalin-like leader (and, consequently, order) continues to age, it doesn’t look like their grandkids plan to follow in their ideological footsteps.

The second poll, conducted by the Levada Center and also consisting of 1600 surveyees from all over Russia, focused on perceptions of the president’s political independence. Caricatures of President Dmitri Medvedev as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s puppet became ubiquitous in the West after Russia’s 2008 presidential election, but have fallen out of style as the press finds itself faced with more and more conflicting statements from the two prominent leaders. And while experts continue to debate whether these conflicts represent real differences of opinion or just attempts to feign legitimacy, most Russians have apparently taken the puppet metaphor to heart. The Levada Center survey published today estimates that 66 percent of Russians believe that President Medvedev “operates under the control of Putin and his adherents” in the Kremlin. At the same time, a sizeable minority of 22 percent reject this notion, maintaining that Medvedev works to further his own policies. Both of these figures are more or less consistent with two other studies conducted in the past year.

Similarly, the majority of Russians (51 percent) feel that power is shared equally by both of these leaders. Indeed, Putin and Medvedev have often remarked about how they work “as a tandem.” But the Russians who do feel that there is an imbalance of power in country are more likely to believe that the majority of it rests with Putin (28 percent) as opposed to Medvedev (13 percent).

Regardless of who’s pulling the strings, Russians are overwhelmingly united in their belief that Medvedev’s is following the same political course as his predecessor: 55 percent say he’s continuing it generally, and 24 percent – exactly. Only 3 percent of Russians believe that Medvedev’s policies are “entirely new.”

The VTsIOM poll can be read in Russian by clicking here.
The Levada Center poll can be read in Russian by clicking here.

“Well-known circumstances do not allow us to do this [to ratify the protocol – Ed.],” said Gryzlov. “The issue has to do with terrorist activity in Russia.”

Russia has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1996, when it joined the Council of Europe under the condition that it would work to prohibit capital punishment. Since then, however, the practice was never banned outright. Gryzlov stressed that despite this, the majority of other obligations that Russia agreed to upon joining the Council had been fulfilled. “For sure, we haven’t ratified the sixth protocol; however, the problem is being resolved differently, but it is being resolved” by continuing the moratorium, he said.

The Russian Constitutional Court ruled last November to extend a moratorium on capital punishment, which had been set to expire in January 2010. The move overruled the court’s original decision in 1999 to allow the introduction of the death penalty if every region of Russia had provisions allowing for jury trials, which Chechnya, the last region without them, was planning to introduce at the beginning of this year.

A January poll by the research center VTsIOM estimated that 44 percent of Russians support a full introduction of the death penalty, with 18 percent in opposition. The majority of those in favor consist of members of the Communist party and elderly Russians, while most of those opposed are members of the opposition parties Yabloko, Right Cause, and Patriots of Russia, as well as young adults. Support for the death penalty in relation to terrorism, however, is relatively higher. In 2005, when VTsIOM estimated public support for capital punishment to stand at 84 percent, 96 percent of respondents were in favor of using the death penalty as punishment for acts of terrorism.