Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye

June 7-13, 1997

[translation for personal use only]

Report by Yelena Ivanovna Bashkirova,

director of the Russian Public Opinion and Market Research Institute, and Yuriy Yevgenyevich Fedorov, professor of the Russian Federation Foreign Ministry Moscow State Institute of International Relations:

"RUSSIA AND EXTERNAL THREATS; OVER HALF THE POPULATION INDIFFERENT TO NATO EXPANSION"

A leading Russian center for the study of public opinion and a member of Gallop International, the Russian Public Opinion and Market Research institute, has conducted two public opinion polls with a Russia-wide cross sample. Their subjects were Russians' ideas of Russia's place and role in the world, external threats and ways of neutralizing them, NATO expansion to the East, and the Russian Federation's possible reaction to these processes. What are in our view the most interesting results of this study are cited in this article.

Public opinion on specific foreign policy issues depends on a premise which is of enormous importance -- ideas of Russia's place and role in the world arena. A substantial majority of Russians -- approximately 66 percent of those polled -- realize that the country's international status has declined by comparison with the past while about 75 percent of respondents believe it is very important for the country to regain its position as a superpower. This response is entirely natural. Previously a sense of being a citizen or rather a subject of a great empire helped Soviet people endure the economic deprivations and political repressions. The state's military might was seen as the most important guarantee of the people's security. And that was not only a propaganda ploy. Historical experience, primarily the experience of World War II, convinced them of that.

Strategic Priorities

A substantial majority -- 62 percent of those polled -- believes that the priority for Russia is the achievement of the position of a world economic leader while about 30 percent believe that the country is seeking simultaneously economic and military leadership. This was evidently affected by the respondents' realization that the main factor in national development in the world today is not so much military as economic might.

Russians' ideas of the strategic tasks of the country's foreign policy are very diverse. From 85 to 93 percent of those polled believe that Russian foreign policy should protect the state's territorial integrity and economic interests, safeguard national security, and create favorable foreign conditions for emerging from the economic crisis.

An important place is assigned by Russian public opinion to relations with the states which emerged on the territory of the former USSR. About 65 percent of Russians believe it is very important to develop relations with the states of the near abroad and also to protect the interests of the Russian-speaking population living there. However, here only slightly over one third of those polled believe it is essential to protect the interests of Russians living outside the former USSR.

Considerably less importance is attached to the consolidation of international organizations and the protection of human rights in foreign states than to support for "our supporters abroad." These were favored by 44, 30, and 16 percent respectively. The last figure is of special importance in our view. It is well known that the support of the world communist and "liberation" movement was an important element of the USSR's foreign policy. And it looks as though in that respect the policy of the totalitarian regime differed from the people's opinion.

This system of priorities is not surprising. It reflects ideas of the tasks and aims of foreign policy which are not only inherent in Russians. And that is evidence that totalitarian complexes and great-power ambitions are replaced by a kind of "natural" patriotism and an understandable desire to protect their own interests in the international arena and not to impose their own orders on others using for this purpose, inter alia, "our supporters" abroad.

Russia's Political Priorities

About 75 percent of those polled asserted that the state of affairs in the international arena influences the possibility of resolving the problems facing the country and voiced concern at Russia's international position. And nearly 60 percent even believed that the development of world events influences their lives. But it may be supposed that these assessments are conditioned not by a person's real experience of life but by universally accepted opinions or by some sense of his own "involvement" in the broad world. But the figures in table 1 show that in their daily lives people think of far more prosaic things.

Table 1

"What are the most serious problems facing the country?"

Wages and pension arrears ....................... 72.4%

Overcoming economic crisis ...................... 54.3%

Eliminating crime ............................... 53.7%

Restoration of USSR ............................. 13.6%

Consolidation of country's international status . 12.1%

Continuing economic reforms ..................... 8.7%

Developing democracy ............................ 3.9%

Averting any external threat .................... 3.5%

Others .......................................... 3.1%

Don't know ...................................... 1.4%

Indeed, when a respondent was asked a direct question about whether he was concerned for Russia's international position or whether the development of events in the world arena is influencing his own life then stereotypical ideas and premises entrenched by decades of propaganda efforts evidently came into play. The deterioration of Russia's international status, which few people doubt, is seen by the mass consciousness as an unequivocally negative phenomenon irrespective of the reasons which have caused this deterioration, of what it actually consists, and of whether it is possible to overcome it, and so forth. This is a kind of manifestation of the mass "patriotic instinct" which operates at the subconscious level rather than at the level of a rational analysis of the situation.

But if the same person was asked to choose the most acute problems facing the country (without, let us note, limiting the number of possible answers) then he would orient himself primarily to practical requirements stemming from real daily life. Here the problem of the deterioration of Russia's international status retreated a long way into the rear. The need to overcome this situation was noted by only 12 percent of those polled.

Several conclusions of practical importance stem from Table 1. For instance, the restoration of the USSR or the resurrection of Russia as a great power is seen as an important task by only 13 percent of Russians despite the obvious and quite widespread nostalgia. It seems to us that this was a manifestation of the common sense inherent in Russian public opinion.

Perception of External Threat

This "duality" is also perceived in the Russians' perception of the external threat. Approximately 34 percent of those polled were able to indicate specific sources from which they imagine an external threat to Russia's security to proceed. In other words they do not have an amorphous sense that somewhere outside Russia there is some threat to it but a specific idea of the source of that threat. But, as we can see from table 1, only 3.5 percent believe that the neutralization of this threat is among the country's most important tasks. But that in turn attests either to the fact that the level of the perceived threat is not great or to the fact that its very emergence is the result of a

stereotypical, uncritical view of a particular country.

The spread of ideas of the sources of the threat is no less interesting. They are summarized in table 2.

Table 2

Russians' Ideas of the Sources of the External Threat

West ............................... 23.0%

including United States ............ 13.0%

including NATO ..................... 5.0%

East, or Third World ............... 7.2%

Near Abroad ........................ 2.5%

Chechnya ........................... 1.5%

From these figures it follows very obviously that only approximately one quarter of Russians share traditional Soviet ideas of the sources of the threat to the country. Here the United States ranks first -- not only as the most militarily powerful state but also as the "main adversary" of Soviet times.

What is interesting, however, is not that the United States comes first on the list of sources of the external threat but the fact that only 13 percent of Russians share that opinion. On the one hand this is evidence of the ineffectiveness of the Soviet propaganda of former times and of the present efforts by the opposition mass media. On the other it may be supposed that attempts to play the anti-American and in general anti-Western card will hardly lead to domestic political success.

Attitude Toward NATO

When the respondents were asked to answer the question of the sources of the threat only 5 percent cited NATO. But when the direct question was put -- "are you concerned at plans for NATO expansion to the East?" -- then the nature of the replies was somewhat different. They are presented in table 3.

Table 3

"Are You Concerned at Plans for NATO Expansion to the East?"

Yes .................. 29.7%

Yes rather than no ... 16.4%

No rather than yes ... 9.2%

No ................... 44.7%

Obviously only about 5 percent of the population has more or less clear views of NATO as an organization which threatens Russia in some way. They themselves cite NATO among the sources of threat without leading questions from the interviewer. When there is such prompting respondents remember everything they have heard about NATO expansion and either the desire to "associate themselves" with the opinion of the country's leadership or stereotypes inherited from the past or other mechanisms of a rational or rather irrational nature start to operate in their consciousness.

Something else is of interest. Despite the intensive processing of mass consciousness by the government and opposition mass media and the inevitable relics of totalitarian ideology, less than half the population is concerned to some degree or other at NATO's future expansion. Here only 18.5 percent of those polled believe, like the Russian military establishment, that this expansion of the North Atlantic bloc will result in the intensification of the military threat to Russia. Approximately 10 percent believe that it will lead to Russia's political isolation in the world arena as a whole and in Europe in particular.

Even more indicative are the figures attesting to the countermeasures which Russia should take in response to the North Atlantic alliance's expansion. Only 15-20 percent of respondents agreed that our country should in that case deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus or Armenia, introduce its troops into Belarus territory, and withdraw from arms limitation or reduction agreements, including the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Strategic Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty.

Measures of a military nature but with a less clearly expressed confrontational bias are more popular. About 40 percent of respondents believe that Russia, in response to NATO expansion, should conclude a military alliance with Belarus and with the CIS countries. Slightly more respondents are inclined to a purely political response of a nonconfrontational nature -- 45 percent of those polled expressed themselves in favor of strengthening the European collective security system.

An analysis of the figures makes it possible to suppose that 20- 25 percent of the Russian population shares -- to a greater rather than lesser degree -- traditional ideas of the West and NATO as the source of the threat to Russia. It seems to us that they are in favor of a tough, strong-arm response to the expansion of the North Atlantic bloc and see in military might the main symbol of Russia's greatness and a very important instrument for safeguarding its security. They are the main mass of the bearers of totalitarian ideology, an inalienable component of which is the perception of the outside world as a source of potential threat. Approximately 15 percent of respondents experience in connection with NATO's intentions certain fears which are of a political rather than a military nature. At the same time over half the Russian population is quite indifferent to NATO expansion.

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The Russia List

18 June 1997

djohnson@cdi.org