The Levada Center conducted a nationwide survey on “Public Reaction to the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s film.”
The numbers are impressive, especially given the total censorship of the topic in the federal media:
38% know about it or have at least heard something. 15% know about it well. 5% of Russian citizens have watched the film. That last figure roughly matches the view count — 4 million on YouTube does not include VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, or torrent downloads.
A huge thank-you to everyone who helped spread it — this is entirely your achievement. Getting information that is de facto banned out to an audience of this size in such a short time is incredibly impressive.
78% believe the facts presented in the film to one degree or another. The most important number for us is this: 27% of those who have heard about the film believe those facts and are shocked by them. That is exactly the right word — “shocked” — because there is no other appropriate reaction to our story, and the ACF is very glad that so many people share our emotions. I would also note that viewers highly appreciated our extremely meticulous approach to the evidence: 66% said they were either “certain” or that it “seems true.”
This is, of course, an appalling number. 82% distrust the integrity of the authorities so deeply that they consider ties to gangsters and murders to be “typical behavior.”
This part is very interesting. 28% (21+7) still believe that an investigation and punishment for Chaika will actually happen. This, by the way, is the most important number for the Kremlin. As I wrote, if they drop their foolish “we must never admit Navalny was right” stance, they could even boost their approval ratings.
Today, the ACF is wrapping up its public opinion survey on Kushchyovskaya and is also launching its own nationwide poll on attitudes toward the film Chaika. It’s great that Levada has already conducted one, because that means we’ll be able to verify the numbers using slightly different wording. Based on the results of the two surveys, we should get a very accurate picture.
For now, the summary is this:
1) It’s fairly clear why no Kremlin official is eager to defend Chaika. He is completely toxic, and trying to shield him is extremely damaging both to the authorities as a whole and to specific individuals. The only viable defense strategy is silence.
It is critically important to keep working to spread the film. You can see it yourselves: among those who have watched it or heard about it, 78% understand that the film is truthful, and 23% are “shocked.” There is no more important task right now than simply sharing the film and the investigation. Put it on bulletin boards in your town, post it on your social media, email it to people you know, forward it to relatives. It may seem like “everyone has seen it,” but in fact only 5% have actually watched it, and only 20% know it well — so there is still plenty of work to do.
