So that readers do not have any questions why the current leader of the state Vladimir Putin is not mentioned in the poll, it is worth saying that about the attitude of Russians towards Putin, Levada Center recently conducted a separate sociological study, the results of which were analyzed in the Military Review in that including Why the poll didn’t have the name Medvedev - another question ... Perhaps soon, the personality of Dmitry Medvedev is waiting for a special study in the framework of the activities of the Levada Center specialists, unless of course such activity is intended to be consistent. Well, in general - the survey covered only the leaders of the state of the XX century only, which, however, the organizers of the survey did not mention.
So, let us return to the survey results on the attitude of the Russians to the Russian rulers from Nicholas II to Boris Yeltsin. 1601 Russian took part in the survey, but it does not say how many regions and which were exactly within the boundaries of this study.
The largest number of Russians, as it turned out, have a positive attitude towards Vladimir Lenin - 15%. The second place in the poll was “taken” by Nicholas II - 14%, the third place was shared by Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev - by 13% of votes.
Leonid Brezhnev celebrated the victory in the status of “rather positively”; with 3%, he was ahead of Lenin, and he, in turn, “broke off” from Khrushchev in 1%.
The results for the top three "leaders" of the survey under the option "I rather negatively relate to" the following: Mikhail Gorbachev 35%, Boris Yeltsin 34%, Joseph Stalin 25%.
The triple of “leaders” in an extremely negative attitude is the following: Gorbachev 31%, Yeltsin 30%, Stalin 13%.
If you believe the presented results, it turned out that the largest number of respondents cannot express their opinion on the personality of Nicholas II as the ruler of the country.
In order to arrange the politicians considered by the Levada Center specialists in places of popularity among the respondents, one can use a rather effective sports system “indicator of usefulness”. Undoubtedly, it, as well as the whole question of “Levada” will be subjective, but still ... To estimate this indicator, we add up all the positive and “rather positive” ratings, and then subtract the negative and “rather negative” estimates from this amount. After that, the final version of the survey results could be as follows:
Mikhail Gorbachev - minus 44% (more negative evaluations), Boris Yeltsin - minus 42% (more negative evaluations), Nikita Khrushchev 10% (more positive evaluations), Joseph Stalin 12% (more positive evaluations), Vladimir Lenin 27% (positive ratings more), Leonid Brezhnev 27% (more positive ratings), Nicholas II 27% (more positive ratings). If we also deduct from these percentages those that corresponded to the result “I don’t know this”, then Leonid Brezhnev and Vladimir Lenin share the first place.
The survey results show that the majority of citizens surveyed by the Levada Center see the most negative leaders of the country of the twentieth century, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Obviously, this is connected with, let's say, living memories of the activities of these sovereigns. If one could not stop (to put it mildly) the collapse of the USSR, and, calling things by their names, did everything for the collapse of a huge country, the second one also aggravated the crisis, dividing the country into two camps - the camp of oligarchs and their associates (1% of the population) and all other citizens ... Naturally, such negative memories of the periods of government of the country Gorbachev and Yeltsin and put them in the aforementioned ranking on the last place with breathtakingly low results.
It is interesting that Gorbachev, not without whose help the USSR collapsed, received a negative percentage of the rating, but Nicholas II, who could not defend the Empire, gained more positive votes among the respondents. With what it can be connected? Perhaps the main reason is that Nicholas II has already managed for most Russians to become such historical a person whose work is difficult to characterize, since too much has flowed since the end of his reign. In addition, Nicholas II, along with his family, was a victim in the hands of the new government, and Mikhail Gorbachev, during his lifetime, also receives the highest state awards ... Hence the significant difference in the political rating that the respondents gave.
For some reason, Leonid Ilyich is not surprised. After all, most of today's Russians have youth passed precisely during the years in which this person was in power. And youth (youth), multiplied by relative stability both in economic and domestic terms of those years, is a reasonable excuse to vote for Leonid Brezhnev. In this case, the objective and subjective factors add up and give the very result that is indicated above.
Based on the latest, so to speak, trends, it was somewhat unexpected to see such a personality as Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) sharing the first line of the rating. If we consider what amounts of dirt were poured on him and the memory of this man after the collapse of the USSR, and what volumes of dirt continue to pour out now, then the "Leninist" interest is a real precedent. The precedent of growing up of our society, which is now trying to separate flies from cutlets and not to cave in under the cliches that have become the norm.
It is noteworthy that many Russian publications (in particular, Kommersant) managed to connect the relatively high percentages of Lenin and Stalin with the quote: “Russians lacked historical knowledge”. But if to take into account that over the past 20-25 years, such individuals as Lenin and Stalin were exposed by the overwhelming majority of domestic scientific and historical publications as villains who plunged the country into chaos and terror, then the mentioned (or rather, not mentioned) “ The merchant ”experts should be asked: where did the“ lack of historical knowledge ”come from, there are megaliberal historians multiplying their“ truth ”with millions of copies in opposition to other historians, who also often went to extremes. Maybe the matter is different? - In that, for example, many already, I'm sorry, were reading the literature, in which the leitmotif of describing life in Russia from 1918 to 1953 years were often far-fetched facts about millions of people shot and tens of millions of prisoners of Soviet camps, and even hundreds of millions who died in the war. Well, what is worth only the recent statement of Leonid Gozman, who became “super popular”, who on TV, sorry, blurted out that during the Great Patriotic War the USSR had already lost 127 million people ... Then, admittedly, Gozman recovered, declaring 27 millions. Only the number in 127 of millions of "dead" immediately became almost a new revelation, a new "truth" about the war. Mr. Sokolov issued, for example, a new “fact” - not 27 millions, but forty million died. Apparently, he considered himself, forgive my God, by hand ... It was this blatant lie with clearly tracing goals that probably was the main reason that people decided to speak in the majority in a positive way with regard to both Stalin and Lenin.
A precedent that is hard not to notice ... And this is despite the fact that the Levada Center polls often took into account only the opinion of very specific target audiences. Well, if a similar survey were conducted by the Military Review website, some readers would say: it is clear why Gorbachev has a cruel minus, and Lenin or Stalin have a plus; immediately, they say, some Stalinists with “hurray-patriots” sat down ... They say that the audience is not the same - that is why the result is ...
So what happens is that the “Levada Center” now also polls only “Leninists” and “Stalinists”, and dilutes everything with “Brezhnevites”? That is unlikely. It's just time for some gentlemen (well, the same “merchant” experts, for example) to understand that the Russian people are beginning to think little by little, and not just “screaming” information, no matter how conspiratorial and tempting it may seem ... At least I want to believe it .
The results of the survey can be found here: Attitude of Russians to the heads of the Russian state at different times.