Tomorrow the Anti-Corruption Foundation will publish its annual report (finally!). To mark the occasion, we asked our super-sociologists to conduct a large nationwide survey on corruption.
What do citizens think: do they see corruption as widespread? One question was especially important to us: whether people consider officials lying on their financial disclosure forms to be a serious offense. We devoted a great deal of effort to this issue over the past year, and there is even debate about it within our own circles.
Today brought two more excellent reasons why our survey is especially timely: — Serdyukov’s amnesty has been finally approved by the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the criminal case itself has been closed; — reports have emerged that the Accounts Chamber audited RUSNANO and its chief nanotechnologist Chubais, found a huge number of violations involving billions of rubles, and then... that’s right... classified the report. By the way, if anyone has it, please send it to us at fbk@fbk.info — we’d be interested to read it.
Corruption is a sensitive subject, and our sociologists did everything possible to ensure the results were sound, excluding all leading questions.
Personally, I really wanted to include something like: — "At the estate of Yakunin, the head of Russian Railways, there is a special room for storing fur coats at a specific temperature. Tell us, what emotions do you feel upon learning this?" or — "Sechin, the head of the state oil company Rosneft, set his own salary at 5 million rubles a day. In your view, what would Comrades Stalin and Andropov have done to him for that?" But the head of our polling team firmly vetoed that. So this is a proper survey, conducted according to the best standards of sociological science.
So,
Telephone survey of Russian citizens aged 18 and older, based on a random sample of mobile and landline phone numbers, conducted June 3–8, 2014. The statistical margin of error does not exceed 3.8%.
The first slides replicate FOM’s tracking data. We did this so you could see the trend over time (obviously, comparing two different surveys is not entirely methodologically correct, but still). This matters a great deal, because it shows how much Ukraine and the “Crimea is ours” effect displaced corruption from the political agenda — which, in my view, is an important motive behind Putin’s actions.
We really do see that the share of people who consider corruption to be high has fallen. But it remains very high nonetheless: from 80% to 72%. So “Crimea is ours” and war alone will not be enough for Putin to make everyone forget about corruption. He may still have to bomb Voronezh (a Russian ironic expression about harming one’s own people for propaganda purposes).
Here you can see that most of those who think the fight against corruption has intensified learned that from television.
Next come two slides that were very important to us. Does our attitude toward violations in officials’ disclosure forms match prevailing public opinion?
As you can see, Russians have once again shown their “bloodthirstiness.” Jail them, fire them, fine them, confiscate their property. On the zombie box (slang for state TV), they love showing polls about homosexuals, Stalin, and the death penalty. They won’t show our poll there, but you can be sure of one thing: corrupt officials are viewed even more negatively than homosexuals (though I’m not sure that will make them feel any better).
If the authorities relied on opinion polls across the board, and not only when it suited them, then all those sons of Zhirinovsky, Babakov-type deputies, and Liksutov-style deputy mayors would be under criminal investigation.
What comes next is especially interesting in light of today’s news about Serdyukov. We asked people whether they could recall any high-profile resignation over corruption, and then asked those who could remember one about Serdyukov.
86% said “negative” or “rather negative” — so it is no surprise that the Dmitry Kiselyovs and Vladimir Solovyovs have completely forgotten about the “Serdyukov case” and never mention it on air.
So those are the results. They are very useful for helping us plan our future work, and we hope they are interesting to you as well.
My thanks to all the volunteers in ACF’s sociological service. You did a great job, and thanks to you, Russia has publicly available sociological data that can be trusted.
Many thanks to everyone who helped us conduct this survey: Nastya, Misha, Adilya, Ivan, Yekaterina, Denis, Tamara, Liza, Viktoria, Kolya, Vladimir, Lidiya, Alexandra, Irina, Sonya, Katya, Anna, Roma, Elena, Anya, Nastya, Roman, Viktoria, Alla, Anna, Katerina, Konstantin, Artyom, Anton, Ilya, Yevgeny, Olga, Lyudmila, Nadezhda, Irina, Yevgenia, Tanya, and of course Galya Koposova and the head of ACF’s sociological service, Anna Biryukova.
Tomorrow we publish the report, but in the meantime, sign up for a new survey (we’ll be measuring the ratings of potential candidates for mayor of St. Petersburg).