Almost one in five Russians believe that LGBT people should be “eliminated,” according to the results of a new independent Levada Center poll.
The figures showed 18% of respondents giving the response, marking a slight softening in attitudes toward members of the LGBT community since 2015, when 21% advocated their “elimination.” Similarly, 32% said this year that gays and lesbians should be “isolated from society,” down from 37% five years ago.
“The stigmatization of socially vulnerable people has decreased over the past 30 years, and norms that require helping and not isolating from them have expanded,” Levada sociologist Karina Pipiya told the Kommersant newspaper Sunday. Positive attitudes have also improved over the past five years, with 9% of the respondents favoring helping the LGBT community, up from 6%, and 32% saying they should be “left alone,” up from 24%. See more via Moscow Times
Russians have become more tolerant of representatives of sexual minorities, prostitutes and feminists, a Levada Center poll showed. An increasing number of respondents are inclined to believe that the state should not take radical actions with respect to these categories of citizens, they must be left to their own devices. The opposite trend is observed in relation to religious sects: the majority (in the aggregate 62%) of the respondents believe that they should be isolated from society or destroyed. Sociologists note that non-profit organizations that talk about the problems of these people contribute to a change in the perception of vulnerable groups. However, the survey was conducted on the 20th of February, even before the beginning of the intensive growth in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Russian Federation.
The survey was conducted among respondents at home from February 20 to 26, 2020 as part of the research project “Soviet Man”. 1.6 thousand Russians from 137 settlements of 50 subjects took part in it. The study showed that respondents show extreme intolerance primarily to criminals. In their view, terrorists (80%), pedophiles (75%), killers (61%) and extremists (44%) should be eliminated. Researchers do not specify whether this is a crime proven in court. It also does not specify which communities should be understood as religious sects (there is no concept of “sect” in Russian law): respondents believe that their members should be isolated from society (41%) or destroyed (21%). In the Levada Center, presenting the survey data, they mentioned, for example, “Jehovah's Witnesses” in this connection. It should be noted that the “Jehovah's Witnesses Management Center in Russia” and 395 of its regional branches were recognized in 2017extremist organizations and banned in the Russian Federation. At the same time, the Supreme Court clarified that the teaching of "Jehovah's Witnesses" is not prohibited.
Compared to 2015, Russians have become more tolerant of sexual minorities. Over five years, there have been slightly fewer people who believe that representatives of LGBT communities should be isolated from society (there were 37%, and now 32%). Over five years, there have been more respondents who believe that LGBT communities should be left to their own devices: now 32% think so against 24% in 2015. 41% of respondents believe that feminists should not be paid attention.
Calmness in Russian society began to be perceived as prostitution. Five years ago, 18% of respondents believed that prostitutes should be eliminated, now only 9% think so. 26% of supporters of isolation of sex workers from society - five years ago, such a contradictory point of view was shared by 33% of respondents. The number of respondents who believe that sex workers should be helped has significantly increased (there were 7%, and it became 27%).
Among those whom, according to Russians, should be assisted, the homeless (88%), people with HIV (79%) and severe mental disorders (63%) are confidently leading. They are followed by alcoholics (74%), beggars (57%) and drug addicts (53%).
“Over the past 30 years, there has been a weakening of stigmatization of socially vulnerable categories and an expansion of the norm according to which it is necessary to help, rather than isolate from them,” Karina Pipia, a sociologist at the Levada Center, commented on Kommersant’s comments. the role is played by the development of the non-profit sector, the emergence of organizations working to improve the image of vulnerable groups in the eyes of society. They talk about domestic violence , about the lives of people with HIV . For example, the film by Yuri Dudya ( '' HIV in Russia: an epidemic that is not talked about '' .— “Kommersant”) watched by several million people. However, the opposite trend is observed for members of religious sects. In the 1990s, they were treated better than now. On the one hand, this is the result of the state’s repressive struggle with them, and on the other, the strengthening of the role of Orthodox identification: more than 70% of Russians now consider themselves Orthodox against 15–20% in the early 1990s. ” Read more via Kommersant