Remember the joke about how the lion divided the animals into the smart ones and the beautiful ones, and the monkey didn’t know what to do: what am I supposed to do, tear myself in two? That came back to me because of an amusing detail in the latest Levada Center poll about me. Here are the survey results: public opinion on Alexei Navalny. And here is an explanation of those results in plain language for ordinary people. So. Take a look.
The first three items under “why people don’t like him” are unpleasant, but there’s nothing to be done about that for now. That’s the TV propaganda machine. If a person sees someone on television for the first time in their life and hears that he’s corrupt, power-hungry, and tied to the United States, then even if they don’t fully believe the propaganda box, a residue still remains. What’s more interesting is ideology. Nationalism plus liberalism attracts people. Nationalism plus liberalism repels people. And I can’t tear myself in two, like that same monkey. It’s an extremely curious thing. So I decided to run a poll on the subject: [Error: Invalid poll ID 1917463] I understand that it’s not methodologically sound. I understand that you have to look at the whole picture, and so on. I sharpened the contrast on purpose to make the result more interesting. Let me answer right away: I’m not going to “dial up the nationalism” and “bolt on some liberalism,” or vice versa, based on the poll results. The views I hold are the views I hold—it’s not a gas burner with an adjustable valve. I’m just genuinely very curious to understand this phenomenon. P.S. By the way, the Levada Center is doing something very interesting. They are raising money to conduct two large independent sociological surveys in Moscow. The research will be completely transparent and monitored for any cheating. Very useful. Because in a week, and then right up until the September 8 election, we’ll be fed “sociological” “studies” from FOM and VTsIOM (state-aligned Russian polling organizations) from morning till night, according to which old man Sobyanin will surge from 52 to 64%, while everyone else will be at 2–3%. We’ve already seen this in the Khimki elections: the state pollsters kept droning on that Chirikova had 3–5%, and she ended up with 17%, even with falsifications and the use of administrative resources. So if you’re interested, you can take part.