MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Ever more Russians think that freedom of speech is endangered in this country, according to public opinion poll results published on the Levada-Centre site. That the Russian government has cracked down on the freedom of speech and the independent mass media is belied by 38 percent of the respondents (as against 30 percent in 2000). Meanwhile, 46 percent, like four years ago, claim the authorities do not restrict the freedom of speech at all and do not infringe on the activities of the independent mass media. In comparison with four years ago when 56 per cent of the polled said that criticism of the government in the mass media was definitely or rather beneficial for the nation, now this figure stands at 65 percent. The number of people who consider that the mass media attack the government definitely or sooner to the detriment of the nation has diminished from 27 percent in 2000 to 21 percent today.
Levada-Centre indicates that those who believed that state regulation of the mass media would be on the whole useful for Russia have decreased from 31 percent to 29 percent. The number of those who assert that such toughened control would be detrimental has gone down from 27 percent in 2000 to 26 percent nowadays. Some 35 percent of the respondents, in comparison with 29 percent in 2000, assume that stricter government vigilance over the press would be neither detrimental nor beneficial.
These figures were harvested during the poll of 1,600 citizens, conducted in 128 settlements of Russia's 46 regions on October 15-18. The survey of 2000 followed the same representative sampling pattern.
