RUSSIA MORE THAN TWICE AS HAPPY NOW, DESPITE ECONOMIC WOES

Pro-Russian Crimeans celebrate in Sevastopol on March 16, 2014 after partial showed that about 95.5 percent of voters in Ukraine’s Crimea region supported union with Russia

(VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images)

Russians More Than Twice as Happy Now, Despite Economic Woes

February 11, 2015  •  From theTrumpet.com

By Jeremiah Jacques


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Russia is at odds with the West over the war with Ukraine, its currency has fallen by about 50 percent against the United States’ dollar in the past year and inflation has sent consumer food costs soaring. But you wouldn’t know any of this, looking at the nation’s happiness index.

At the end of 2014, Russians were more than twice as happy than they were a year earlier, according to a new poll by win/Gallup International. The poll calculated Russia’s “happiness index” by subtracting the percentage of respondents claiming to be unhappy from those reporting to live happy lives. In late 2014, the number climbed to 59 percent—compared to just 24 percent at the end of 2013.

The Moscow-based Vastnik Kavkaza listed several factors contributing to the lift in Russian spirits: “Sociologists suggest that the surge of happiness of Russians was possibly related to a series of events that have raised the mood of many people in the last year, such as the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, joining the Crimea, and the general rise of patriotism.”

This surge in happiness deflates a common Western view of current events in Russia. As the ruble has faltered, many in the West have speculated that the discomfort on the nation’s people would become more than they could withstand. The sliding standard of living would become unbearable, Westerners said, and it could turn the Russians against President Vladimir Putin. (You can read such speculations here, here and here.)

But the Trumpet never bought into this view. “Putin will probably remain in office—and even survive politically in the longer term,” we wrote in October 2014. “[D]espite the increasing economic discomfort most Russians are feeling, a growing number of them adore and fully support him.”

Then in late December, we said:

The Westerners who think the current discomfort will be too much for Russians have made a mistake: They have assumed that the Russian capacity to endure suffering and sacrifice in the name of the nation is roughly equal to that of the average Westerner. In fact, it is far greater.

The new win/Gallup poll shows that the Westerners predicting the end of Putin’s popularity have indeed misread the Russian people. Overwhelmingly, the Russians are not upset with him or his leadership of Russia. In fact, the timing suggests that the country’s surge in happiness is not in spite of Putin’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy, but because of it. ▪