TV and fridge exist in different worlds – Vedomosti

Regular measurements relations Russian President Vladimir Putin showed the next highest results. According to VTsIOM, Putin’s approval rating activity in October reached 89.9% (a record for VTsIOM). According to “Levada Center,” the president satisfied with the work of 88% (not a record – in June it was 89%).

The same VTsIOM reported that the index of social attitudes of citizens about the situation in the country decreases the fourth consecutive month, and updated in September 2015 at least – 58 points (minus 15 points in May). Fall and the index of sentiment about his life, and the index of social expectations. The proportion of those who believe that the hard times behind, reduced the share of waiting for the worst to come, on the contrary, is growing.

Sociologists have become accustomed to such a discrepancy between the economic situation (both personal and in the country) and rated power. Rating of confidence in the president exists separately – as a symbol of identification with the country. That president and anyone else acting on behalf of the country to the outside world – and only contact with the outside world manifests the greatness of power for the Russians.

This interpretation could be extended. On the actions in the outside world know the Russians mostly from TV – it is logical that the president, as a television character, has no alternative (it would be strange, reading a comic book about Superman, hope that the hero will be someone else).

The sociologist Anton Oleynik writes that the relationship between government and society in countries such as Russia, is convenient to the example of an hourglass in which the upper sphere (the ruling elite) and the bottom (ordinary citizens) linked only a small bridge. Two spheres exist largely independently, and the daily life of their inhabitants eliminates the need for each other.

similar picture capture provincial Russian studies conducted by sociologists of HSE under the leadership of Simon Kordonsky with the support of “Khamovniki”. According to them, about 40% of the working population employed in the informal sector of the economy, “not visible” in official statistics. Citizens do not want to communicate with the government and do not expect anything from him – he, as well as the power is not needed formal system of communication and representation.

In this sense, it is incorrect popular metaphor of a “war of the TV and the refrigerator” – a TV and fridge exist in different worlds. Homeland of the TV, of course, is the pride rising from its knees and shows gruel, she even sometimes requires sacrifice from the public – in the form of dying is not known where the soldiers. But she knows very little about what is happening in the refrigerator citizen. And thank God, thinking citizen.