Following a twenty-day-long “unscheduled” inspection, the Ministry of Justice declared the Levada Center, Russia’s leading independent pollster, a “foreign agent.”

Unless the organisation is able to rid itself of the label in the near future, it will cease to exist in its present form. As various commentators have noted, the ministry’s move to persecute the sociologists comes after the latter’s publication of data on the sharp decline of United Russia’s approval rating. On the eve of the Duma elections, the regime has as good as done away with virtually the last body capable of providing the public with independent sociological findings.

The designation “foreign agent” – which, far from being neutral in character, has an insulting, derogatory ring to it (at least in the Russian language) – was first applied to Russian NGOs in 2012. If an NGO receives foreign funding and is engaged in political activity, it is promptly ushered into the “agents club.” Organisations with “agent” status are subjected to a drastically increased number of inspections, while any contact with government agencies is made virtually impossible for them. But Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, believes the “agent” tag may well prove altogether fatal for his organisation: “As per the law, people will have to be warned that we’re foreign agents, and when you’ve been slapped with a label like that, holding opinion polls becomes impossible. It’s a hypocritical situation: they’re afraid to ban us outright, and so they’re quietly choking us in the corner by ostensibly legal means.”

Political Activity

The latest inspection of Levada was initiated following a denunciation by Senator Dmitry Sablin, leader of the Anti-Maidan movement; the inspectors quickly established a fact that has never been kept quiet in the first place – the Levada Center receives a significant proportion of its income from collaborations with Western companies, research organisations and universities. Additionally, the inspection served once again to drive it home to the Levada Center team that “even the receipt of foreign funds in payment for purely commercial activities” – i.e., marketing research, research into consumer behaviour, etc. – “is now regarded as unlawful.”

Nor were any particular difficulties expected when it came to inculpating the Levada Center of being engaged in “political activity”. Earlier this year, a further definition of this vague term was added to Russia’s NGO law – and, in parts, it reads as having been written with the Levada Center specifically in mind: political activity is defined therein as “the shaping of public and political views and convictions, including by conducting public opinion surveys and publishing their results.”

The inspectors, however, didn’t content themselves with formalities

The inspectors, however, didn’t content themselves with formalities, and began to look for evidence that Levada was engaged in “real politics.” They discovered “repression-worthy” political engagement in eight public speeches given by some of the organisation’s leading figures. But the Ministry of Justice inadvertently shot itself in the foot: the very pronouncements it deemed objectionable illustrate precisely why the Levada Center is really under attack. Lev Gudkov (from a lecture): “People understand that Putin is reliant on the law enforcement agencies, on the security services, on the oligarchs, on government officials, on the bureaucracy, and that he, in turn, represents their interests.” Alexei Levinson, Head of Levada’s socio-cultural research department (from an interview): “I believe that even if we do see outbreaks of popular discontent, they will occur only in areas with a high concentration of problems, or in places where the authorities have taken some sort of unexpected action [in single-industry towns. – Ed.]. [… ] Our authorities sometimes do stupid things, and this could provoke a reaction.”

The word at Levada is that the inspectors were carrying out a “political order”, but that they did everything in “a sloppy and highly tendentious manner.” The sociologists are determined to appeal the Ministry of Justice’s decision, but aren’t particularly confident of success in this undertaking: not a single NGO with “agent” status has prevailed against the Ministry in a Russian court of law.

“Once they’re done with sociology, they’ll move on to history, economics, physics and the other sciences, just like they did during the Stalin era”

If the Levada Center is unable to shake off the “foreign agent” label, it will continue to exist solely as a marketing research factory, with its socio-politically-oriented activities all doomed to be scrapped – alongside its scholarly endeavours. The fact that the regime is specifically killing off the Center’s analytical arm, in addition to its links with the international scholarly community, is one Lev Gudkov finds particularly difficult to stomach: “We mustn’t think that the threat of repression looms over sociologists alone. Once they’re done with sociology, they’ll move on to history, economics, physics and the other sciences, just like they did during the Stalin era. Levada is the 141st organisation to be included in the Foreign Agents Registry, but soon enough the list of agents will run into the many hundreds or thousands.”

Approval rating

The Levada Center’s current problems began following the publication of their latest data on United Russia’s approval rating. In August, a mere 31% of Levada’s respondents said that they’d vote for the party of power – down by a not-insignificant 8% from the month before. Other major social research organisations, however, recorded no such precipitous decline: according to the state-run VTsIOM [All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center] agency, United Russia enjoyed the support of 41.2% respondents in August, while the Public Opinion Foundation – a body with close links to the Kremlin – put the figure at an even more optimistic 44%. Nor do these discrepancies represent a particularly recent development, as amply demonstrated by the figures for May: while Levada had United Russia’s rating at 35%, VTsIOM and the Public Opinion Foundation reckoned it at 46.2% and 49% respectively. Levada’s unrelenting pessimism may have started to get on someone’s nerves.

In discussing the rationale behind the attack on Levada, numerous commentators have recalled other “inconvenient” polls conducted by the Center. Journalist Roman Dobrokhotov: “The Public Opinion Foundation’s election turnout forecast gives a figure that’s TWICE as high as that given by Levada, which today was branded a foreign agent. Coincidence? I think not!”

Writer Viktor Shenderovich: “The Levada Center, whose multiple-choice survey of public attitudes towards Putin included ‘disgust’ as a potential answer, has promptly been declared a foreign agent. Revenge, by the looks of it, is about the only thing they [the regime] can actually do well.”

What, in the current situation, can be done to protect the Levada Center? Civil society has no idea. Political analyst Kirill Rogov offers a definitive formulation of a rhetorical question that Russia’s liberal activists all now ought to be posing to themselves: “Are there any forces in Russia capable of speaking up, coordinating themselves, and taking a stand in opposition to this crusade against what is undoubtedly a national asset – an asset of the real Russia, and not the Russia of the thieves and the oil barons? Even in Soviet times, gloomy and grey as they were, cultural figures, scholars and people of reputation would occasionally speak out against the destruction of the nation’s assets and legacy.”

Sociologist Ella Paneyakh, for her part, makes no attempt to conceal her discombobulation in the face of state aggression: “First Levada, and now Memorial International as well [the latter organisation, too, is currently undergoing an inspection which will mostly likely result in its inclusion in the Foreign Agents Registry. – Ed.] I don’t know even know why I’m writing this, I don’t have a single constructive idea. I just want to feature among the ranks of people who’ve taken note of what’s going on and oppose it.”

“Anyone with any decency should appropriate the ‘foreign agent’ label as a mark of distinction”

Historian Sergei Medvedev, however, isn’t quite as negative: he proposes that “anyone with any decency should appropriate the ‘foreign agent’ label as a mark of distinction, a mark of quality. I, for one, am a foreign agent, because I’m trying to smuggle Western values – dignity, equality, freedom – into Russia. Peter I was a foreign agent, so was Catherine [the Great], and so, of course, was Pushkin. So was [absurdist writer Daniil] Kharms, for example. Join them.”

The Kremlin has vowed that the upcoming elections will be fairer and more transparent than ever before. Are we to believe, then, that amidst the propaganda, the corruption and the puppet courts, there are germs of honesty and integrity? Of course not: honesty used as a political instrument for the election of a marionette parliament isn’t honesty at all, but hypocrisy and deception. It’ll be far easier for the Kremlin to weather any coming discontent if Levada confines itself to ascertaining the approval ratings of, say, household detergents.