Now there is no reason to assert that the attitude towards the first and last president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who is celebrating his 90th birthday, has changed for the better.
Mikhail Chernysh, First Deputy Director for Scientific Work at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“For now we cannot definitely talk about a positive trend in the mindset of the majority of Russians towards Gorbachev. The fact that the number of those who believe that Mikhail Sergeevich brought more harm decreased by 3%, and those who are sure that he brought more good increased by 1% - alas, for him, this is not a clear indicator of “increase in sympathy.” In surveys of this level with such a sample, the standard sampling error is up to 5%. Now there is no reason to say that the attitude towards Gorbachev has changed - for example, for the better,” the sociologist believes.
Most often, Gorbachev is blamed for the collapse of the country, although there are those who rejoice at this outcome.
“There is a very small proportion of the population that is ready to positively assess the collapse of their country. But for the majority, at the moment when the country collapsed, their hopes for a bright future also collapsed. And this majority, and perhaps their children, are unlikely to ever evaluate positively perestroika and the subsequent collapse of the USSR. And a very small layer is still confident that progress has been made - the country, having disintegrated, has moved away from the “repressive state,” Chernysh said.
As PolitNavigator reported, editor-in-chief of Ogonyok magazine Vitaly Korotich believes that Gorbachev brought about the collapse of the USSR, and that it was the first President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, who caused the collapse.
Read also: “Our Mishka surrendered his country.” In his native village they stigmatize Gorbachev.