№ 1 - 2005
Kertman G.L.
Interest for Politics, Russian Variety: Motives Manifest and Ulterior

On the basis of the data of mass polls that were carried out by the “Public Opinion” Foundation in 2001 to 2004, and of the focus-groups’ results, the author analyzes the level of Russian citizens’ political concernment. “Quantitative” analysis, aimed at revealing tendencies to increasing or decreasing political engagement of the “man in the street”, is supplemented in the article with “qualitative one”, oriented at studying the motivation of people at least keeping an eye on political events and processes and turning them over in their minds. According to the author’s conclusions, the models of receiving political information, that prevail in Russian mass consciousness, presuppose neither any marked reflection apropos of public problems, nor concomitant political self-identification through judgment as to one’s kindred political forces, positions, parties etc. These models assign to the common citizen the role of a passive observer capable, at best, of using political information for more or less successfully adapting himself to the macro-social situation.