Levada Center
 |
|
| Motto | From opinions to understanding |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2003 (1987) |
| Type | Research institute, independent non-governmental organization |
| Location | |
|
Key people
|
Lev Gudkov, director Tatyana Zaslavskaya,honorary president Alexei Grazhdankin, Boris Dubin, Marina Krasilnikova, Alexey Levinson and Yuri Poletayev, Lyudmila Khakhulina |
|
Staff
|
Approximately 60 |
| Website | www.levada.ru |
Levada-Center is a Russian independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organization. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada (1930—2006). Levada-Center traces back its history to 1987 when the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) was founded under these leadership of academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya. Being one of the largest Russian research companies, the Levada-Center regularly conducts its own and commissioned polling and marketing research.
After the Levada-Center on 1 September 2016 published the results of a poll that had found a significant decline in support for the ruling United Russia party, the Russian Justice declared that the pollster was 'performing the functions of a foreign agent'. “This manifests the increase in internal repressions carried out by the country’s leadership,” the center’s director, Lev Gudkov, had told TV Dozhd, the New York Times reported, “If they won’t cancel this decision, it will mean that the Levada-Center will have to stop working, because you cannot conduct polls with such a stigma put on you.” A pro-Kremlin group, Anti-Maidan, had been seeking the Levada-Center's blacklisting, the Moscow Times had reported on 11 July 2016, adding that in a statement at its website, Anti-Maidan had claimed that 'commissioned by the U.S. military, this Russian investigative service [Levada] gathered information in Moscow and Russia’s regions...Wisconsin University acted as an intermediary between the Pentagon and the Levada-Center'.
The Levada-Center was formed in 1987–88 as the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), under the direction of Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Boris Grushin, Valery Rutgajzer and Yuri Levada. VTsIOM was the first organisation to carry out representative mass surveys within the Russian population. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, now the honorary president of Levada-Center, headed VTsIOM in 1987–1992, followed by Yuri Levada from 1992–2003.
In August 2003 the Ministry for Property Relations attempted to take control of the Centre by placing government officials on the VTsIOM board of directors. In response, all the employees of VTsIOM quit and continued their work under a new name, VTsIOM-A. After the Federal Antimonopoly Service forbid them to use this name, the new organization was renamed "Levada Analytical Center", (Levada-Center).
...
Wikipedia