Levada Center

The Levada Center is a Russian independent, nongovernmental polling and sociological research organization. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada (1930–2006). The center traces back its history to 1987 when the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) was founded under the leadership of academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya. Being one of the largest Russian research companies, the Levada Center regularly conducts its own and commissioned polling and marketing research. In 2016, it was labelled a foreign agent under the 2012 Russian foreign agent law. The Levada Center was formed in 1987–88 as the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM, ВЦИОМ), under the direction of Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Boris Grushin, Valery Rutgajzer and Yuri Levada. VTsIOM was the first organization to carry out representative mass surveys within the Russian population. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, now the honorary president of Levada Center, headed VTsIOM in 1987–1992, followed by Yuri Levada from 1992 to 2003. In August 2003 the Ministry for Property Relations attempted to take control of the center by placing government officials on the VTsIOM board of directors. All the employees of VTsIOM quit in response and continued their work under a new name, VTsIOM-A. After the Federal Antimonopoly Service forbid them to use this name, the new organization 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. The founding and development of the agency was intertwined with the career of its founder, Yuri Levada — the first professor to teach sociology at Moscow State University. During the political thaw initiated by Nikita Khrushchev, Levada was allowed to carry out limited surveys of public opinion.