Re: kargarlitsky on Russian sociology etc.

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <Gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been working in residential opinion polls in Argentina, a
country with some points in common with the fSU on these issues. Yes,
I DID it, it was an "eat or starve" issue, and I won't tell you I am
not ashamed, but at least I can share with you some expertise I
gained. I discovered, for instance, that the universe of these
surveys is basically "middle class" (in the Argentinian sense of a
mostly wage earning petty bourgeoisie with some little sprinklings of
individual entrepreneurs), due to concrete field difficulties.

Since security conditions have been evolving in a directly inverse
proportion to the growth of our foreign debt, residents in appartment
houses (which compose the bulk of residents in Buenos Aires City) are
very hard to interview, and the same uses to run for people residing
in closed quarters or country clubs. So, they are usually dropped.
Residents in unsafe areas are also hard to interview, due to opposite
reasons: prejudiced, lower middle class, surveyors, do not go to the
"villas de emergencia" where these people live. So what? You are left
with those people residing in one-storey houses, a universe which has
a basically "center of the Gauss curve" profile.

So that, when, say, American detergent manufacturers want to have an
idea of whether Argentinian households will prefer THEIR brand over
that of the competitor, what they will obtain is the image of what
will those middle class homes do. They will not have an idea of what
will the whole of the society do. Now, this is not quite serious in
so far as to these issues middle class households living in
apartments and in one-storey houses tend to share their pattern of
preferences, the lower classes have been ruled out of consumption
after 1976, and the upper layer is not a massive market and is to be
attacked by means of another kind of artillery.

But, what about political opinion? Well, in political opinion polls
you will have the "middle of Gauss curve" image again. And, due to
scarce resources, you will hardly have a seriously conducted survey.
People will be interviewed at some important downtown spots, plus a
few spots at commercial centers outside. Or, people will be
interviewed by phone (thus setting a limit to the kind of answers you
get, since telephone is not a massive thing in Argentina today). And
the opinion of Inland Argentina will be seldom surveyed (perhaps some
survey can be conducted in, say, Córdoba and Rosario, and if you are
lucky enough Mendoza and Tucumán). But that is all.

However, these polls DO have some meaning. They express the most
conservative side of the abstract, current, state of consciousness of
the masses. While our enemies would like to state them as the
expression of the state of mind of "the nation", we can put the
adequate distorting lenses and see a better image. Of course, one
must know the country and its history in order to do so. But I do not
think that these polls are so useless.

Take, for instance, the data we have just read on the USSR. What they
portray is the expectative of the center of the Gauss curve in the
sense that they need a strong central power which puts order in the
chaos. That is why the attempt at orderly westernization by Tsardom
and the Khruschevite attempt at peaceful coexistence and emulation
display such a large acceptancy ratings. And this is not only a
matter of comparison with previous states of mind. We should not
forget that, historically, emulation with the West emptied Soviet
ideology of that basic component of Lenin's (and Stalin's to a
certain extent) view: that the USSR was on an equal foot with
imperialist countries. The events after 1989 have shown that for
them, as for almost anybody in the Third World, the alternative was
"socialism or colonization".

The survey shows that this is still not clear in the mind of the
Muscovite middle classes (I bet the surveys were made there, perhaps
in Petrograd -will NOT say St. Petersburg unless under torture-, and
hardly elsewhere). Well, just wait and see.
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx
NUEVA DIRECCIÓN ELECTRÓNICA DESDE EL 10 DE JULIO DE 2000
NEW E-ADDRESS AS OF JULY 10, 2000
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx