By Vestnik Kavkaza
Valery Fedorov, General Director of the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, presented the results of surveys on a mood with which the Russians meet new 2013 year.
Now the groups of people who believe that they are poor have fallen to an historic minimum – 16%. Of course it does not mean that the rest feel as if they are on the Forbes list. Those who say that their material situation is good are also not very numerous – only 12%. The absolute majority say that their material situation is average - 72%. But we see that the increase of the average evaluation happens at the expense of the negative. This is a very positive and inspiring tendency. 12% expect that the material situation of their family will get worse. As for optimists, who think that their situation will improve - 22%. 59% think that the situation will stay the same.
How happy are we? This is a difficult and complex question. I will just give you the results of two surveys. One is from 1992, 20 years ago, another was done in January 2013, very fresh data. Those who admitted that they are completely unhappy composed 5% 20 years ago and 1% now. Those who are more unhappy than happy, a moderately negative formulation, composed 31% 20 years ago and half that now – 14%. Those who are more happy than unhappy, a moderately positive evaluation, composed 14% 20 years ago and 70% now. Those who can say that they are happy without any reservations amounted to 2% 20 years ago and 9% now. So, 79% can say that they are quite happy or happy. 20 years ago every fifth Russian, even more, 22%, thought about the future with fear. Now they are only 4%. 20 years ago 42% were worried about the future, now only 20%. 20 years ago every third person, 34%, looked to the future with hope and now there are 63%. Finally, joyful expectation. Only 2% 20 years ago and now 13%. We can really say that Russia met 2013 in a positive mood, full of positive expectations and plans.
Sociologists also conducted a social poll on the Dima Yakovlev law. 38% are well aware of this, at least, they evaluate their awareness of the Dima Yakovlev law in such a way. 47% "have heard something, but do not know the details," and only 14% first heard about the law from our interviewers. 76% "support a law banning foreign adoptions." 24% "disapprove."
The opponents of the law have the fallowing arguments: "Children need a family, they must have a chance to have a family." "State issues should be resolved in a different way, not by manipulating children." "Foreigners adopt more children than Russians themselves. '" "In the U.S., there are higher living standards and more opportunities for children." "Foreigners adopt sick children." "Not all Americans are bad." The most common argument of the supporters of law is that we must raise our children by ourselves. "Orphans need to be adopted and raised in Russia." The second argument is related to the high incidence of abuse, criminal abuse and even death, not isolated, which not only happen but are actively covered by and discussed in the media. The third argument is the fate of children adopted abroad: monitoring how their rights are respected is much more complicated than in Russia.
The law does not apply to all foreign adoptions. And the United States did not adopt many more children than any other country. For example, France alone is adopting half the number of children adopted by the U.S. from Russia, despite the fact that the French population is 60 million people, and the U.S. population is about 300 million So we should not share the illusion that we are closing the way to foreign adoptions in general. But let's see what Russians think about foreign adoptions altogether.
This is a topic which, of course, is being actively discussed. We asked this question three times. Let me remind you that the topic was and intensively discussed for a long time. Each case of a death of a Russian child abroad spurred public debate. Those supporters of the children who came to the march on Sunday, for many of them this is a new problem, rather, a reason to once again criticize the authorities. But for society as a whole, this topic is not new, it is being discussed intensively. It is not by chance that in 2005, we asked this question: "Do you believe that the state should prohibit adoptions of Russian children by foreign citizens, or are you against it?" This was in 2005 - seven years before the Dima Yakovlev law. What was public opinion then? 32% supported banning the adoption of Russian children by foreigners in general. 61% were against. In 2010, after five years had passed, we asked the same question. 38% expressed at the time that they would like to prevent adoption. We see that there were more people supporting this point of view. But the number of those who believe that this should not be prohibited was significantly lower - it changed from 61% to 48%. Finally, in January 2013 we asked the same question. We can see that almost 53%, the vast majority of Russians, are against foreign adoptions in general, and only 35% support such adoptions. So we see that in the last 7 years the view of society on this issue has changed diametrically. Once again I want to stress: this is not the result of political battles, not the result of a politicization of the issue, it is a consequence of a long-term trend related to the fact that foreign adoptions are less perceived as the only and the best solution of the problem of orphanhood. On the contrary, this view becomes less widespread, and the view that we do not only have but also can do this at home and solve the problems of our orphans is reinforced.
We asked people if they had adopted children in their families. 2% of respondents said "yes, we have or have had these children." What is 2%? We interviewed a representative sample of Russians, starting from the age of 18. In our country, about 110 million people are aged over 18 years. Therefore, 2% of 110 million people means that approximately 2.2 million people say: "yes, we have or had this experience".
