MOSCOW – The share of Russians aware of the Bela Vezha agreement signed on Dec. 8, 1991, which terminated the Soviet Union and created the CIS, has declined from 67 percent to 56 percent over the past decade, the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) said.
Another 26 percent ‘have heard something’ about the agreement, and the share of respondents who learned about the agreement from the sociologists has increased from 7 percent in 2006 to 15 percent now.
The number of respondents who regret that the Soviet Union is gone has not changed much over the years (63 percent at present vs. 65 percent in 2006). The older the respondents are the more pronounced their attitude is: 85 percent of senior citizens feel sorry about the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the percentage is 27 percent in the younger generation.
Russians have grown positive that it was possible to save the Soviet Union: that opinion was maintained by 47 percent of respondents in 2006 and 56 percent now. Some 32 percent disagreed and said that the breakdown of the Soviet Union was unavoidable, and 12 percent were undecided. The sociologists polled 1,600 respondents in 130 populated localities in 46 regions on Nov. 5-6.
Most Russians (68 percent now and 69 percent in 2006) believe it is impossible to reconstruct the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
However, 52 percent support the idea of a new union between former Soviet republics (sharing a border, parliament, government and currency), and 17 percent are against.
