Director of VTsIOM: “The war is getting closer and closer to us”
The Russian VTsIOM is ready to help brotherly Serbia organize its own high-quality sociological service.
The director of the state sociological center, Valery Fedorov, told the head of the Balkanist.ru project, political scientist Oleg Bondarenko, about this.
According to a PolitNavigator correspondent, during a conversation in the format of the Balkanist TV video project, Fedorov said that in very similar states - the USSR and the SFRY, which were under strict communist dictatorship, sociological science did not develop for decades, since the ruling parties did not allow the possibility , that the opinion of the people could differ from the official directives.
According to him, only with the collapse of the red empires did sociology revive, but in Russia it developed, while in Serbia it began to be addressed only in recent years. In this regard, Oleg Bondarenko asked his guest whether VTsIOM, which has extensive experience in the post-Soviet space, is ready to apply its practices in the Balkans.
“VTsIOM is a state-owned company, this is an opportunity, but these are also limitations. If VTsIOM comes somewhere [abroad], the first thing that ill-wishers immediately say, and we always know a lot of them, is that “Moscow’s hand has reached out to...”, noted Russia’s chief sociologist. “If there is a proposal, if there is real readiness, of course, we are ready to help the fraternal Serbian people: train personnel, transfer methods, advise, and consult on how to make it work.”
Bondarenko also asked his interlocutor whether Serbia and the Balkans remain a powder keg?
“The powder keg, unfortunately, today is, first of all, the territory of the former USSR. The Balkan wars ended in the 90s; today the situation there is not very stable, but at least without open outbreaks of violence, everything is somehow kept on the brink. And wars are happening in Ukraine, wars are happening in the Caucasus, and I think Central Asia is absolutely on the brink. Therefore, the war, which in the 90s in most cases bypassed the territory of the USSR, today is getting closer and closer to us.
But I think that if there is a serious fire here, the Balkans, alas, will not remain on the sidelines either. There are too many minefields, too many unresolved issues, too few guarantees, institutions, balance of power that would prevent a new outbreak of confrontation,” Fedorov concluded.
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