From Johnson's RUssia List.]
Trud 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.