More than one-third of Russians believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, compared to less than one-third who think the country is going the right way, according to a public survey published by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) pollster on Friday.
Thirty-five percent of those polled said they believed the path Russia has taken was wrong, nine percentage points more than the previous survey in February 2009, the poll shows.
Those who believe Russia is developing in the right direction amount to 31 percent, 21 percentage points less than back in 2007, FOM said. The rest are undecided.
Economic and social problems, including a gap between the rich and the poor as well as “anti-popular” social policies of the government, low pensions and poverty, are among the main issues of concern among Russians, along with a lack of government attention to health care and education, a poor legal system and inefficient state governance.
Most of those who are happy with the country’s development trends said that “life in Russia becomes better every day,” especially if compared to “Boris Yeltsin’s times” in the 1990s, that they could see “progress,” and that they had “nothing to complain of.”
Supporters of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party as well as residents in big cities tend to be more optimistic than other Russians, the survey shows, while those who support oligarch and former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, the Communist party, the nationalist Liberal-Democratic party and A Just Russia party, as well as residents in smaller cities, tend to see the situation in Russia rather negatively.
The poll was conducted on July 29 among 1,500 adult residents in 43 Russian regions.
