[PEN-L:33676] Majority of Russians Prefer Soviet Union

["Michael Hoover" <HooverM@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sources:
[1] http://afr.com/world/2002/12/31/FFXRBFEOCAD.html

[2]http://www.interfax.ru/one_news_en.html?lang=EN&tz=0&tz_format=MSK&;
id_news=5613376
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Majority of Russians want to go back to the USSR:

 AFP. 30 December 2002.

 MOSCOW -- Nearly seven out of 10 Russians wish the Soviet Union had
 never collapsed, according to a new poll released Monday on the 80th
 anniversary of the creation of the Communist bloc.

 Some 68 percent of those polled said they regretted the union's
 disappearance, while 25 percent said they did not, according to the
 Vtsiom Institute poll quoted by the Interfax news agency.

 Three-fourths of the 1,600 Russians polled said that the Soviet Union
 was better suited to fostering people's social and economic growth, the
 poll found.

 Some 55 percent of those polled also said they thought of the USSR as a
 voluntary union of free states, while [only] 34 percent said it was a
 Russian imperialist group made up of subordinate republics.

 And 59 percent said the Soviet Union's break-up in 1991 could have been
 avoided, while [only] one-third of those polled said the fall of
 Communism was inevitable.