The solution came only recently when I cared to check the source of your number. The 2000 data that you ascribe to "Pew pollsters" has, apparently, not been collected by Pew in 2000. It is taken from, as Pew's table says, "1999/2000 survey trends provided by the Office of Research, U.S. Deparment of State" (http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1019).
What is important here is less the exact source of the data (I trust the State Department as much as Pew) than the question of when exactly it was collected. I could not find the poll that Pew refers to. But the idea suggests itself that these "37%" of the "1999/2000 survey trends" which you ascribed to the year 2000, is actually data from 1999. In that year, NATO bombed Serbia which, as all polling agencies reported, led to a steep drop of pro-Western feelings among Russians. What was remarkable about this episode in Russian-US relations, however, was not the drop in the first half of 1999, but the fast recovery of pro-Western positions among the Russian population at large, once the bombing had stopped. In distinction to this recovery among the general public of the RF, attitudes towards the US among the Russian elites never fully recovered from their decline in 1999. After several years, Russia's elite seems, by now, to have succeeded impregnating most ordinary Russians with an aversion towards the West, in general, and the US, in particular.
4. Since our debate in January-February 2009, among other articles corroborating my worries, the following analysis has appeared on "Open Democracy" at http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/russians-don-t-much-like-the-west .
Although I stand accused of being Russophobic and wanting to hinder a rapprochement between Moscow and Washington (http://www.atlantic-community.org/index/Open_Think_Tank_Article/NATO-Russia_War:_A_Possible_Scenario ), I hope, as we all do, that the current détente between Russia and the US will last, and, perhaps, even lead to a new Russian-Western partnership. Yet, Obama and Medvedev are walking on thin ice. As both Russia's elite and population do not trust the US, even a minor incident could return us on the path towards a new Cold War.
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APPENDIX
Ivanov's rebuttal to my reply to his critique of my article
(see: http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20584 , http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=CDI+Russia+Profile+List&articleid=a1232381631 , http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/88068 , http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/89320 )
RE: Umland (JRL 2009-#19)/RE: Ivanov (JRL 2009-#12)
From: Eugene Ivanov (eugene_ivanov@comcast.net)
Published in: Johnson's Russia List (JRL) 2009-#21, 30 January 2009
First of all, I'd like to thank Andreas Umland for his thorough comments on my blogpost.
At the core of Umland's response lies his explanation that due to indiscriminate cutting and editing, at the hands of TNI editors, his position has been severely distorted. To restore the truth, Umland has provided us with a fuller version of his article posted to the American Chronicle. He has also suggested that I should have first read this AC version before writing on my blog.
I disagree. I'm not a scholar studying Umland's writings and I'm not obliged to read everything he publishes. I came across the TNI article and commented on what I read there. If Umland believes that his views were misrepresented, he should blame the TNI editorial office, not me.
Besides, and that is a key point, although the AC version of the article is arguably a better piece of literature, both are conceptually similar in claiming that anti-Americanism is rising in Russia; both invoke the same polling data to support that claim. Speaking of polling data, I was somewhat surprised by Umland's confession that polling data were submitted to his TNI article "only after TNI's explicit request." What is that supposed to mean? That Umland originally claimed rising anti-Americanism in Russia without providing any data?
Now, having met "TNI's explicit request" to provide polling numbers and having shared with me a reference to a Levada poll, Umland seems to believe that his job is done. No, it's not. In the center of our discussion is Umland's assertion (articulated in both versions of his article) that "[w]ith the beginning of Vladimir Putin's rise in 1999…Russians' views of the United States were deteriorating continuously." Has Umland supplied us with any reliable data to support this assertion (except for his expert advice to watch, "for a week or two", Russian TV)?
The truth is that no such data exist. Tellingly, Umland dismisses a VCIOM study I mentioned in my post, which was directly contradicting to what he says. Sure, when Umland likes a polling number, he writes that the poll was conducted by "Russia's leading sociological survey agency." When he doesn't like a number, this number was obtained by an agency that "has been put under stricter governmental control." How convenient! (I could understand why VCIOM pollsters would feel pressured to inflate, say, Medvedev/Putin's rating numbers or to downgrade concerns about the economy. But why would they tamper with numbers on U.S. favorability in Russia? Beats me.)
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