Levada Center

Levada Center
Motto	From opinions to understanding
Formation	2003 (1987)
Type	Research institute, independent non-governmental organisation
Location	Moscow, Russia
Key people	Lev Gudkov, director Tatyana Zaslavskaya,honorary president Alexei Grazhdankin, Boris Dubin, Marina Krasilnikova, Alexey Levinson and Yuri Poletayev, Lyudmila Khakhulina
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. Being one of the largest Russian research companies, Levada Center regularly conducts its own and commissioned sociological and marketing researches.

Structure

The non-governmental organisation Levada Analytical Center was originally formed in 1987–1988 and called the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (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 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)

Ratings

• According to rating agency Expert for 2008 Levada Center is in the top 30 leading research companies in Russia
• In July 2009, the Association of Regional sociological centers "Group 7 / 89" released the results of the fifth wave of the annual study "Top Research Companies - 2008", in which the Levada Center took second place.

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. The Center publishes the sociological journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald.

The Levada Center is a member of the international associations ESOMAR and ОIRОМ. Experts of the Levada Center are constant members in conferences and round table discussions such as the Liberal Mission Foundation (Фонд «Либеральная миссия»), the Carnegie Moscow Center, The Gorbachev Foundation, Memorial, Public Lectures of Polit.ru Project (Публичные лекции Полит.ру), the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Московская высшая школа социальных и экономических наук), the Public Center of A.D. Sakharov (Общественный центр им. А. Д. Сахарова) and Khodorkovsky Readings (Ходорковские чтения).

Articles, interviews and expert opinions published by the Levada Center regularly appear in domestic and foreign mass-media such as Kommersant, Vedomosti, 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 (Отечественные записки), Social Studies and the Present (Общественные науки и современность), The New Times, Ogoniok and Novaya Gazeta.

The Center continues to carry out research programs, they have developed in the framework of VTsIOM. Publishes a journal "Journal of Public Opinion" (from 1993 to 2003, the editorial staff of The Messenger has created and published the magazine "Monitoring of public opinion: the economic and social change"- the name of one of the major research programs, developed under the supervision of Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya

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

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.

History

The Levada Center was formed in 1987–88 and was called the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (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. After the Federal Antimonopoly Service forbid to use this name, the organisation was renamed into the Levada Analytical Center (Levada Center).

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 Center 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.

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 invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. 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 [3] refers to Tatyana Zaslavskaya and Boris Grushin as the founders of VCIOM in 1987. He states that he was invited by them to join VCIOM.

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.

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 [4].

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 [5] report that every sociologist left with Levada. Others claims they were silent, except for Grushin. [6].

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 Valery 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 [7], but this is not confirmed on his curriculum vitae [8]. He has assembled a new VCIOM staff, most of whom are little-known.

Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center [9] (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.

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 [10]. Levada reportedly claimed that Putin disrupted at least three attempts to convince him that his approval rating is considerably lower than widely reported. [11].

Research

The research of Levada Center is based on regular all-Russia public opinion surveys. Some already completed studies:

• 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.
• Education program in workplaces on HIV / AIDS in Russia, commissioned by the International Labour Organization and the U.S. Department of Labor, 2005
• "Youth of Russia", 2005-2007
• "Western values and democracy", 2006
• "The relation of population to the police reforms", 2007
• "The European project on school studies on alcohol and drugs. ESPAD-2007
• "Opinion of HIV-positive mothers on the experience of receiving health and social care", commissioned by UNICEF, 2008
• "Reading in Russia - 2008. Trends and Issues. ", 2008
• "Russian Myths", 2008
• "Awareness of Russian citizens on the activities of law enforcement", 2008
• "The problem of quality education and the installation of permanent education in contemporary Russia"
• "Monitoring of elections to the Moscow City Duma in October 2009"
• Voices from Russia: Society, Democracy, Europe, 2006.
• "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.
• International Social Survey Program (ISSP), since 1991.
• New Russia Barometer, in collaboration with Centre for the Study of Public Policy (University of Strathclyde, University of Aberdeen), since 1991.
• World Public Opinion international surveys.

Current and most important studies:

• International Programme for the Social Studies International Social Survey Program "(ISSP), since 1991
• International research Inra Hooper / RSW / NOP-World / GfKNOP, since 1991
• Monitoring social and economic changes, once in two months, starting from February 1993
• Regular participation in international studies World Public Opinion
• Index of consumer sentiment
• Index of social attitudes
• The index of financial sentiment (IFS, in collaboration with the Center of Macroeconomic Research of Sberbank of Russia)

External links

• Levada Center — website in Russian, English
• Community Levada Center — Levada Center on Livejournal
• Levada Center: Public Opinion in Russia — Levada Center on Facebook
• Levada Center's annual yearbooks — The results of the Center's surveys available for downloading (in English, some in PDF-files).
• RussiaVotes.org — some results of Levada Center surveys in English
• The Yuri Levada Archives — the web-based, open-source project that serves as a clearing house for those interested in Yuri Levada scholarship and biographical methods of research. The Archives are part of the International Biography Initiative sponsored by the UNLV Center for Democratice Culture.
• Russia: Polling for Democracy, The Yuri Levada Analytical Center — NED Democracy Stories, September 2011.