What do you think

8220;The people are silent.8221; Throughout Russia8217;s history, this morbid stillness, immortalised by the last line in Pushkin8217;s Boris Godunov, was complicit in many of its tragedies.

8220;The people are silent.8221; Throughout Russia8217;s history, this morbid stillness, immortalised by the last line in Pushkin8217;s Boris Godunov, was complicit in many of its tragedies. Silence from fear, hunger, exhaustion or hopelessness. In the last 20 years, few people in Russia did more to shatter this silence than the dean of Russian sociologists and pollsters, Yuri Levada, who died of a heart attack in Moscow last month at the age of 76. His death signifies the end of a remarkable era for Russia8217;s intelligentsia, one marked by a revolutionary vision of liberty for the nation and unrelenting efforts to make that vision a reality.

A philosopher by education, Levada began practising sociology in the early 1960s. There still wasn8217;t a single department of sociology in the Soviet Union but he was permitted to teach an immensely popular course at Moscow State University and even write his first book, Lectures on Sociology. Then came the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the end of any liberalisation; Levada was publicly denounced and fired from the university.

Mikhail Gorbachev8217;s perestroika brought about the rebirth of sociology. In 1985, the Centre for the Study of Public Opinion was established in Moscow, and Levada soon became its de facto leader. On February 1, 1989, the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta, a flagship of the new openness under Gorbachev with four million subscribers, published a long questionnaire designed by Levada and his colleagues, titled 8220;What Do You Think?8221;

Within 10 days, 200,000 letters flooded in. 8220;I am 80 years old,8221; one of the respondents wrote, 8220;and no one has ever asked me for my opinion.8221; The results of the study were published a year later, the title captured the spirit of the enterprise: Est8217; mnenie! There is opinion!

The respondents described a gravely ill society and an impoverished country mired in shortages, militarised and tormented by an incompetent and rapacious bureaucracy. A majority thought that the country was rife with corruption, alcoholism and thievery. One in four had to limit themselves to bare necessities, and another quarter of the sample 8220;could barely make ends meet8221; and had to borrow constantly from friends and family. Between 1989 and 2004, four such waves were administered.

Together with his colleagues, Levada also traced Vladimir Putin8217;s popularity to the people8217;s wish for a stronger, more effective and honest government 8212; one that would secure order and distribute income more fairly. Yet surveys also showed that this impulse was never a mandate for authoritarianism or neo-imperialism.

Retribution was quick. In September 2003, the State Property Ministry dismissed Levada and repossessed the centre8217;s offices and equipment. Most employees quit and followed Levada to a new private polling firm, the Levada Centre, which he would run until his death.

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Yuri8217;s death followed those of others who had helped end the Soviet one-party dictatorship 8212; leading Soviet journalist and later glasnost troubadour Alexander Bovin, former Politburo member and Gorbachev confidant Alexander Yakovlev, brilliant economist Vasiliy Selyunin. Yuri died in his office. I8217;m sure that, on that day, he was designing a survey or poring over the results of his latest poll.

Leon Aron is director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the forthcoming Russia8217;s Revolution