History
The Levada-Center was formed in 1987–88 as the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), under the direction of Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Boris Grushin, Valery Rutgajzer and Yuri Levada. VCIOM was the first organisation to carry out representative mass surveys within the Russian population. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, now the honorary president of Levada-Center, headed VCIOM 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 VCIOM board of directors. In response, all the employees of VCIOM quit and continued their work under a new name, VCIOM-A. After the Federal Antimonopoly Service forbid them to use this name, the new organisation was renamed "Levada Analytical Center", (Levada-Center).
The Levada-Center has continued the research programs started by its collective in the 1990s–2000s. One of the largest projects is the study "The Soviet Person" study, or Homo Soveticus, Russian: Советский человек, in which specialists used surveys to monitor and identify significant trends in the social development of Russia's society over the past 15 years.
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“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
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