This is good news if the polling in the report described below is reliable. As I've often remarked, economic and political development is as much a change of "mentality" -- of shifting expectations about how "things are done" or should be done. And that takes a generation or more. For the transition economies, one of the biggest challenges has been to create home-grown constitutencies for meaningful, deep institutional reforms.

A necessary starting point, for both economic and legal reforms, is for a significant portion of the population and the politicians to share a vocabulary with which to discuss what would be a better outcome and what needs to be fixed in order to get that outcome. A broadly shared assessment may be starting to emerge after fifteen years, as more and more of Russia's economic activity has become the province of private entrepreneurs and local businesses -- not just kiosk traders from the Caucasus, a handful of oligarchs, and a few multinationals. Note the emphasis on crime and extortion as major threats to business, as well as the widely shared perception that Russia's laws and regulations are so poorly written that it's impossible for anyone to fully comply with the law.

Some of Putin's second term agenda -- including his recent emphasis on reforms to help SMEs -- can be understood as reflecting these public perceptions. Of course, the splits within both the Kremlin and the government too often result in ineffectual or counter-productive responses. But it's a starting point.

[Via the daily email (No 9150) from Johnson's Russia List. NB: The translation of the article provides little in the way of sources of the opinion polling or the context, but given that the article gives breakdowns of responses to a number of specific questions, the data are unlikely to have been invented from whole cloth. In any event, the article is more interesting for what it says about broad attitudes rather than the detailed composition or movement of opinion on specific issues. Therefore, I've reproduced it in full rather than snip excerpts.]

Novoe Vremya, No. 19, May 8, 2005

A FATEFUL TRIANGLE: BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT, AND THE PEOPLE

[Attitudes to the private sector and businesspeople who make fortunes from it changed significantly in Russia in recent years. Increased personal acquaintance with businesspeople as friends and relatives leads to a situation where attitudes to this group grow more positive.]

Attitudes to the private sector and businesspeople who make fortunes from it changed significantly in Russia during the period of perestroika and market reforms.

Increased personal acquaintance with businesspeople as friends and relatives leads to a situation where attitudes to this group grow more positive. When asked the question "What is you attitude, in general, to the people who run private enterprise (small and medium-sized businesses)?" 36% of respondents said that this attitude is "good," 44% - "rather good," 5% - "bad" and 9% - "rather bad." Only 6% of respondents could not answer.

Attitude to the state structures on which small business depends is mostly negative: 44% of respondents believe that "state officials" hinder development of private enterprise and 27% of respondents believe that they help small businesses.

According to majority of the population, obstacles for small businesses on the part of the state bodies are not the main problems for businesspeople. Fear of gangster or police racket is still widespread, which can be seen in answers to the following question, "Do you think that running of private enterprise is safe now (what is the crime situation)?"

The overwhelming majority of respondents (81%) believe that running business is dangerous and only 15% of respondents think this is safe. It is possible that positive attitude to small businesses is caused partially by sympathy of the people to this dangerous occupation.

The idea of to which extent this kind of activity is honest and legal plays an important role in perception of the class of businesspeople by the population. For example, researchers ask "Do you think it is possible to run business honestly and without breaches of the law today?"

The overwhelming majority of respondents (78%) think that it is impossibly to run business honestly and without breaches of the law and only 20% of respondents say that this is possible. Along with this, the problem not as much in original dishonesty of every person starting business as in the laws and state officials making law obedience impossible in business.

As a result of these trends having opposite directions 37% of respondents say that they would wish to have business of their own whereas 58% of respondents would not wish this. The main explanation of those who wish to start business but do not dare to do this is "absence of starting capital" and 6% of respondents mention it and 7% of respondents mention "difficulties with drawing of credit." The other reasons are "absence of enterprising skills" - 21%, "fear of failure in business" - 15% and "bureaucratic red tape" - 11%.

A much bigger number of people would like their children to run business. Among the respondents having children 67% say that they "would like their children have business of their own" and 33% of respondents would not wish this.

Researchers asked, "Do you think that majority of your acquaintances got adapted to marketing conditions or not?": 59% of respondents think that they have got adapted, 31% say that they have not and 11% have been unable to answer.

Positive attitude to children and acquaintances running small businesses is extrapolated to medium-sized and large businesses to a big extent. Answering the question "What is, in general, your attitude to prominent entrepreneurs, owners of companies and enterprises?" a bigger part of respondents (62%) said "good" (25%) and "rather good" (37%). The percentage of respondents having "bad" or "rather bad" attitude to prominent entrepreneurs is 50% smaller - 30% and 8% of respondents cannot give any answer. Positive attitude to large business is comparable to positive opinion about small and medium-sized business being 62% against 80%, although the difference is significant still.

The main claims of respondents against business in general and large business in particular are in the field of moral, ideas about just arrangement of society and role of business in governance of the country. Russians think that "all large property has been acquired illegally" and 88% of respondents say this.

In July 2003, 57% of respondents said definitely that "the state should turn to legal persecution of prominent capitalists according to the cases connected with privatization of industrial enterprises," 31% of respondents believed that this should be done "in exceptional cases" and only 8% of respondents said that this should not be done.

More obviously these views were manifested in reaction to criminal investigation into activities of YUKOS, for instance, non-payment of a big part of taxes. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) supported actions of the authorities, 32% said that "time has come to respond for hiding of profit and tax evasion," 15% called for more stringent persecution of large companies like YUKOS saying "this is a half-hearted measure and it is necessary to take the unjustly appropriated national property from them," 12% of respondents believed that persecution would teach entrepreneurs and "henceforth all business will probably become more honest" and 7% of respondents pointed at the role of the criminal persecution in weakening of political role of business saying that "they will finally lose their power and political influence."

Only 17% of respondents criticized persecution of the company and 12% of respondents approved struggle against tax evasion in principle but were against demonstrative cases.

Claims against the class of prominent capitalists are not confined to accusations of unjust privatization of state property and non-payment of taxes. Mass antagonism is primarily caused by the notions about usurpation of political power by big business and "oligarchs."

For example, researchers received the following breakdown of answers to the question "Who do you think has real power in Russia today?": "large capital and oligarchs" - 40%, "president" - 21%, "organized crime" - 12%, "state officials and bureaucracy" - 9%, "local power bodies" - 4%, "Duma" - 3%, "governors of regions, territories and republics" - 2%. Along with this, weight of big business in politics has been evaluated permanently high in the last decade but evaluation of the power of the president and other institutions grows or decreases a little. Moreover, most respondents (73%) say that big business can receive even greater power. For most of the population this situation is absolutely unacceptable, and they say that Russia should be governed by the president (72%), parliament (14%), government (10%) and not business tycoons (data obtained in March 2004).

Moreover, nine-tenths of respondents believe that "Russia needs strong government" while only 6% of respondents believe that such government is not needed. Questions about a "strong hand" are asked regularly and answers show the spread and nuances of these views and their stability: up to 50% of respondents say that such a "strong hand" is needed "permanently."

To show what the population means in speaking of a "strong hand" it is necessary to quote assessments of the role of Stalin in history: 45% of respondents consider it positive in general, and 42% consider it negative (data of February 2004).

Throughout his first presidency term President Putin enjoyed significant credibility. People did not bother the President with rebukes for unsatisfactory solution of these and those problems. If there was a flood in a region local authorities were to blame and if terrorists exploded bombs in airliners it was the fault of security agencies. However, at the beginning of the second presidency term opinions about activities of the President show noticeable differences between the problems that the President has managed to solve and the problems that are the most important for the population and solving of which the population has expected. This is demonstrated by answers to the question "In solving of which problems do you think Putin succeeded the most in his first presidency term?" The first places were occupied by "wages and pension arrears" (31%) and "development of the Russian economy" (26%).

Solving of the most important problems of "increase of the living standards of the people" and "growth in prices and inflation" was approved only by 8% and 7% of respondents. Moreover, naming reduction of poverty and growth of wealth as the main tasks for fulfillment by the President respondents are skeptical about the chance for their quick fulfillment.

Gradual increase of requirements to the President regarding solving of the problems being most disturbing for the society resulted in a slight decrease of confidence in him in the last five years. The biggest decrease (to 65%) occurred between December 2004 and January 2005 during beginning of monetization of social benefits and introduction of changes in payments for housing and public utilities.