Преследование Левада-центра. Из зарубежных откликов
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ПИСЬМО ПОДДЕРЖКИ ЛЕВАДА-ЦЕНТРА
Социологическая ассоциация Украины выражает поддержку нашим коллегам из Левада-центра, объявленного Министерством юстиции России «иностранным агентом». Присвоение этого статуса сделано на основе некорректного утверждения, что социологические исследования являются политической деятельностью, и имеет много негативных последствий для работы центра. Фактически центр подталкивают к тому, чтобы вообще отказаться от исследования социально-политической ситуации в стране, ограничившись маркетинговыми исследованиями. Кроме того, это прямой сигнал для других социологических центров проявлять лояльность к властям и не публиковать информацию, которая может не понравиться власти.
Мы рассматриваем решение Минюста России как способ поставить социологические опросы под контроль государства и осуществлять цензуру результатов социологических исследований. Такие попытки делались и в Украине, но, к счастью, не были успешными.
Препятствование работе независимых социологических центров является одним из признаков авторитарной системы управления, попыткой ограничить доступ общественности к информации о состоянии общества. Это может иметь самые негативные последствия для развития страны.
Правление Социологической ассоциации Украины
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А. Алексеев - Ю. Чернецкому
Большое спасибо, Юрий!
Текст "Письма поддержки Левада-центра от Социологической ассоциации Украины - оперативный и точный (аккуратный). Мой поклон и благодарность (рискну сказать даже: ОТ ИМЕНИ российских социологов) членам Правления САУ. Ваш - АА. 9.09.2016.
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Из Фейсбука. Наталья Зоркая:
Хочу выразить огромную благодарность всем друзьям, коллегам. партнерам, которые уже высказали публично и в частном порядке свою поддержку Левада-Центру в той или иной форме, от писем и заявлений, статей до постов и репостов. Поддержка очень значительная, и она чрезвычайно важна не только для нас, потому что дает нам больше силы и стойкости, но и для всех НКО, уже попавших под этот подлый удар, боровшихся, борющихся сейчас, а значит и для всего общества. Мы собираем все ваши письма, обращения, публикации и будем вывешивать их на сайте, пока мы работаем и будем работать.
Вот одно из особенно ценных писем поддержки от украинских коллег. (См. выше. – А. А.)
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Б. Докторов – А. Алексееву
… только что получил... скорее всего, по «наводке» Димы Шалина... (11.09.2016)
Я. Щукин - коллегам
Dear colleagues,
hope you all are doing fine.
As you probably aware, Levada Center is under attack again, and at this point they have been assigned "foreign agent" status by "ministerstvo ustizii". Now they are trying to challenge this decision in court.
Here is a link to NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/world/europe/russia-vladimir-v-putin-levada-center-polling-duma-united-russia.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1
And there is a Facebook group as well:
"Support levada center and other russian ngos and research institutes"
I thought about trying to get statement of support from ASA again. Our statement/introductory letter from Ted will need some changes, but overall story is the same, basically...
I am wondering what you all think.
Best regards, Yakov Shchukin
Sociology Ph.D, University of Minnesota, 2006
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Из "Нью-Йорк таймс":
RUSSIAN POLLING CENTER IS DECLARED A ‘FOREIGN AGENT’ BEFORE ELECTIONS
By IVAN NECHEPURENKO SEPT. 5, 2016
Lev D. Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, Russia’s only major independent pollster. Credit James Hill for The New York Times
MOSCOW — Russian officials declared the Levada Center, the country’s only major independent pollster, a “foreign agent” on Monday, two weeks before nationwide parliamentary elections and days after a poll showed sliding support for the governing party, United Russia.
The decision, announced by the Justice Ministry, means the Levada Center will probably shut down its polling operations, which it has been conducting since the late 1980s.
“This manifests the increase in internal repressions carried out by the country’s leadership,” the center’s chief, Lev D. Gudkov, said in an interview broadcast by Dozhd, Russia’s only liberal independent news station. “If they won’t cancel this decision, it will mean that the Levada Center will have to stop working, because you cannot conduct polls with such a stigma put on you.”
A law signed by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2012 requires all nonprofit organizations that receive foreign funding and are engaged in loosely defined political activity to register and declare themselves as foreign agents, a term widely associated with spying in Russia. Rights activists have criticized the law as an instrument to marginalize independent civil society groups.
The Russian government has made an effort to portray the coming elections for the State Duma, scheduled for Sep. 18, as more transparent than those in 2011, which ended with thousands of protesters taking to the streets. A reform-oriented official was elected as head of the Central Election Commission.
The decision to label the Levada Center a foreign agent was widely seen as a setback to the efforts to foster greater transparency.
“It began after we have demonstrated a drop in popularity of the United Russia,” Mr. Gudkov said.
The Levada Center published a poll on Thursday that showed a significant decline in support for United Russia, from 39 percent in July to 31 percent in August.
Other major Russian polling organizations have not reported such a decline. But in a recent interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Putin acknowledged the drop and attributed it to criticism from other political parties.
“Sometimes they simply say things that even laymen realize are hardly practicable, or just unfeasible,” Mr. Putin said. “However, they look good on-screen, scolding and holding up to shame members of the ruling party.”
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ДВА ГОДА НАЗАД
Ted Gerber - ASA Executive Office
Subject: request for ASA action regarding government attack on sociology research in Russia
Dear Sally Hillsman,
I am writing, at the suggestion of Erik Wright, on behalf of a group of US-based sociologists with ties to or research interests in Russia (listed below and cc'ed). We are deeply troubled by the recent moves of the Russian government to pressure the top sociological research institute in the country, the Levada Analytic Center, as well as other independent sociological research outfits, to declare themselves to be "foreign agents". We note that sociologists of every stripe in all countries share a common interest in protecting the conditions in which sociological research is possible, and that our entire profession suffers when governments take actions to limit the scientific freedom and hinder the research activity of our colleagues. Therefore we request that the ASA take a public stance against these actions by the Russian government. We have drafted the attached statement, and we would like the ASA Council to publicly release this statement (or, of course, a similar one with the same basic message) as the organization's official position on this matter. The statement itself provides more detail about the situation in Russian, including the specific actions of the Russian government. This New York Times article also provides some background:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/world/europe/russian-polling-group-says-it-may-close.html?_r=0. (См. ниже: Приложение. А. А.)
We note that the American Historical Association, the Association for the Advancement of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, as well as other similar organizations have taken public stances protesting the Russian government's moves against the Levada Center. See the following links:
http://blog.historians.org/2013/06/the-aha-supports-russian-scholars/
http://www.aseees.org/new/levada.php
http://www.zeitschrift-osteuropa.de/support-levada/de
Thus, we believe it would be appropriate, even expected, that the ASA also take an official position on this matter.
We would be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we look forward to hearing your response to our request.
Best wishes,
Michael Burawoy
Boris Doktorov
Ted Gerber
Dmitri Shalin
Yakov Shchukin
Olga Shevchenko
Sally T. Hillsman – to Ted Gerber
Subject: FW: request for ASA action regarding government attack on sociology research in Russia
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 14:48:07 +0000
Thanks, Ted. Council is going to consider this at its August meeting in New York during the Annual Meeting. Thanks for raising the issue!
Sally
Sally T. Hillsman, PhD
Executive Officer. American Sociological Association
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ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ
Из «Нью-Йорк Таймс»:
POLLING GROUP IN RUSSIA SAYS IT MAY CLOSE
MOSCOW — In recent years, when public opinion turned against the Kremlin, there was one main way to find out about it — the Levada Center, a respected group of sociologists who broke off their relationship with Vladimir V. Putin’s administration and set up the country’s only independent polling agency.
The Levada Center may have to shut down, its director announced on Monday, after prosecutors ruled that it “influences public opinion and therefore does not constitute research but political activity.” In a letter, prosecutors said Levada could not continue to release its work without identifying itself as “a foreign agent,” as required under a new law.
The leaders of many nonprofit organizations have vowed to defy the law. It requires groups to assume the foreign agent label — which evokes treachery and cold war espionage — if they receive financing from outside Russia and are deemed political in nature.
But Lev D. Gudkov, Levada’s director, was far darker in his assessment Monday, saying just the distraction of fighting the requirement would effectively shut down the center, which pioneered American-style polling after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“We are now observing the end of an epoch that began with Gorbachev’s perestroika,” he said. “These are simply the last remnants of freedom, freedom of scholarship and freedom of information. That’s it — it’s ending with this. This prosecutor’s warning is not just a single isolated act, and it’s not just about us. It’s the end of a 25-year period in Russia.”
The prosecutor’s letter, dated Wednesday, details a series of grants the center received from the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute Foundation, amounting to around $800,000 over a three-year period. Mr. Gudkov said foreign sources accounted for no more than 3 percent of the center’s funding.
The Levada Center is made up of a respected group of sociologists who broke off their relationship with Vladimir V. Putin’s administration and set up the country’s only independent polling agency. Credit James Hill for The New York Times
The legal crackdown comes in an atmosphere of acute suspicion, after Mr. Putin accused foreign governments of using nonprofits to penetrate Russian society and spark unrest. Dozens of organizations are facing legal sanctions or warnings, ranging from the Baikal Environmental Wave to the Kostroma Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committee. The focus on pollsters, however, is new.
“If someone orders research, and pays money, then he also orders a certain sort of research, and gives a certain array of questions — that’s the point,” said the lawmaker Yevgeny Fyodorov, asked about the Levada Center in an interview with the radio station Kommersant FM. “This is not important in and of itself, but as part of a machine of management — actually the external management of the country.”
Polling is important to Russia’s leaders, who view popularity as a key stabilizing element in a system without competitive elections. The Kremlin spends lavishly on surveys of tens of thousands of Russians but often withholds the results, especially those that point to rising discontent. A division of the All-Russian Public Opinion Center, which works closely with the Kremlin, has reportedly received a similar warning that it falls under the foreign agent law.
The Levada Center’s sociologists have clashed with the Kremlin for years. The center’s founder, Yuri Levada, incurred Mr. Putin’s wrath a decade ago by publishing polls that showed waning approval of the United Russia party and the Chechen wars. When Kremlin officials tried to assert control over his organization by appointing a new board of directors in 2003, Mr. Levada resigned and formed a private company, the Levada Center. His employees followed him.
Mr. Levada died in 2006, but his center’s work has continued to serve a key measure of the mood in society. An April survey, for instance, found that 51 percent of Russians agree with a derisive nickname for United Russia, “the party of swindlers and thieves.”
Levada’s data often tells a different story from that of Kremlin-affiliated pollsters. For instance, Levada has reported that around 20 percent of Muscovites support Mr. Putin, far lower than the 64 percent found by a Kremlin-affiliated pollster that included only respondents who voted.
Losing that alternative viewpoint, Mr. Gudkov said on Monday, would set Russian politics back decades, “like the Soviet time, when there was one newspaper, Pravda, and one television channel, something like that.”
“A one-sided picture, and people believed it,” he said. “That’s the way propaganda works. You can’t convince people that they are living well, but the idea that the United States has a hostile approach to Russia, that’s easy.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 21, 2013, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: After Ruling, Russia Pollsters May Shut Down.
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См. ранее на Когита.ру (5-9 сентября 2016):
- Левада-центр – иностранный агент?!
- Что следует из включения Левада-центра в реестр «иностранных агентов»?
- Левада-центр – не иностранный агент!
- Левада-центр: из материалов августовского опроса
- Левада-центр и вокруг него: последние известия
- «С ярлыком иноагента участвовать в электоральных и политических опросах будет просто невозможно…»
- Левада-центр: из материалов августовского опроса. Продолжение 1
- «Что будет, если «Левада-центр» прекратит свою работу?». Разговор профессионалов
- «Фактически – это запрет на профессию!»
- Якобы не политическое решение о Левада-центре и правительство РФ как «иностранный агент»
- Левада-центр: из материалов августовского опроса. Продолжение 2
- Заявление директора Левада-центра
