Photo: Kremlin press service

Vladimir Putin's public approval ratings are notoriously high. In December 2015, the Levada Center—known as Russia's most independent, best respected polling agency—put the president's approval score at 85 percent. On New Year's Eve, when Kiev offered an energy deal to “Ukrainian” Crimea, the Kremlin even hurried out a survey to show that the peninsula supports Moscow's decision to leave it in the cold for the winter. In an opinion piece for the newspaper Vedomosti, editor-at-large Maxim Trudolyubov argues that the Kremlin manipulates sociological studies to mask its decisions in populism, raising the stakes for dissent and making it virtually impossible to debate policy today in Russia. Meduza translates that text here.

Supporters of Russia's ruling political party are proud of the fact that policies by the country's leadership are popular. In a recent article for the newspaper Izvestia, Alexei Chadayev, a former high-ranking member of United Russia, said he knows of no policies administered by Vladimir Putin that “openly go against public opinion, as measured by sociologists.” The only exception is Russia's moratorium on capital punishment.

Of course, the reality is far from this. Putin has made a number of unpopular decisions, from the monetization of social benefits early in his presidency to the introduction of higher tolls on commercial vehicles through the new “Platon” system.

In key situations, however, the Kremlin really does strive to win the support of the population, and it makes a special point of documenting this support with surveys and—in a single, but important case, on March 15, 2014, abroad in Crimea—a referendum.

This theme reared its head again over the holidays, when Putin ordered a survey in Crimea on attitudes about the energy supply. On New Year's Eve and the morning of New Year's Day, people were called up and asked to choose between the high-minded concept of devotion to their newfound citizenship, and the low-minded prospect of receiving energy shipments as a reward for betrayal. This is precisely how the questions were formulated, and it was in this spirit that respondents answered.

What we have, of course, is a blatantly manipulative approach to survey work. And, of course, the public is surveyed on questions chosen by strict criteria. They're not asked, for example, what kind of housing and utilities payments they're prepared to make, what kind of ruble-euro exchange rate they prefer, or how much doctors should earn. And while the experts debate what qualifies as manipulation, the public is presented with the results: documented proof that the people consent to “temporary” difficulties, in order to remain in a perpetually problematic situation.

The effort to get the people's endorsement perfectly encapsulates the goals of the Kremlin's “direct democracy.” Moscow's “pollocracy” isn't interested in public opinion; it's a campaign to get the population's “signature”—to generate documentary evidence that a majority of the country's citizens are partners in the Kremlin's key decisions, including its criminal actions. Thus, even violations of international law take on a different character. It's one thing when a mad dictator breaks the law, but it's another thing entirely when the perpetrator is a whole people.

With this approach, all the top leadership's decisions are presented as popular. Even if they lead the country into a crisis, these policies can be criticized only by passing judgment on everyone, which means no one is ever really held accountable.

When you make nothing but popular decisions, however, sooner or later you'll arrive at a thoroughly “unpopular” situation. This is the eternal fate of populism, and there's nothing inherently Russian about it. But in order to come to terms with this, Russian society will have to withdraw its endorsement from the Kremlin's key policies over the past 15 years. This becomes a lot easier, though, when people realize their endorsement was forged in the first place with surveys conducted in an environment of constant propaganda, and polls—falsified from beginning to end—carried out to mask policies in public support.

As Russian society wakes up, the country will come to recognize—on a legal level—that the very existence of large state-owned media outlets on the market are a threat to national security, and the Russian people will come to realize the manipulative nature and ulterior political motives of such public opinion polls.