Yuri Alexandrovich Levada

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Yuri Alexandrovich Levada

Yuri Alexandrovich Levada ( Russian Юрий Александрович Левада ; born April 24, 1930 in Vinnytsia ; † November 16, 2006 in Moscow ) was a Russian sociologist and political scientist .

Life

Yuri Levada graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of Moscow's Lomonosov University in 1952 . In 1966 he received his habilitation in philosophy with a thesis on the sociological problems of the criticism of religion . From 1956 to 1988 Levada worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences .

In the 1960s, Levada was the first Soviet professor to teach sociology at the journalism faculty at Lomonosov University. Lewada got into trouble because of various statements. In one of his lectures, Levada said tanks could not change ideologies, alluding to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 . He also criticized the fact that few people would read the lengthy articles in Pravda . Pravda reacted quickly and denounced the scientist. In 1969 he was stripped of his professorial status because of “ideological errors in his lectures”. The “Institute for Concrete Social Research”, where Lewada was responsible for the theory and methodology sector, had to undergo political cleansing and was then closed.

Then Lewada began to work for the main economic and mathematical institute. He later founded a methodological seminar in which he brought together supporters from various fields of science. This seminar was viewed as a semi-legal institution. In 1988, core staff from his former employer and members of his seminar helped him with his work for the polling institute WZIOM .

"Analitika" voted him Person of the Year 2004 on the Rambler website .

Yuri Levada died in 2006. He was buried in the Troyekurovo cemetery.

Work at WZIOM and Lewada-Center

Between 1988 and 1992 Levada was the head of the theoretical research department at WZIOM under the direction of Tatiana Saslavskaja . In 1994 he became editor-in-chief of the magazine "Social and Economic Change: Monitoring Public Opinion." Since 1991, VZIOM has published a series of research papers on the Russian presidential election, Duma elections, and legislative and executive elections in different regions of the country.

In the spring of 1993 the research program “Monitoring economic and social changes” was started under the direction of Tatiana Saslavskaja. This program was based on regular sociological research (six mass surveys of society per year). It produced data for long-term analysis of the connection of all social classes in Russia with changes in the basic areas of social and economic life of a society.

In August 2003, the Russian Ministry of Property Relations decided to replace the senior management of WZIOM with government employees unrelated to the previous work of WZIOM. In return, all employees quit their activities and continued them under the name "WZIOM-A". The Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation banned the use of this new name.

Since March 2004 the company has continued its work under the new name Lewada Center . It mainly conducts opinion and research surveys in the fields of sociology, economics, psychology and marketing. The Levada Center annually publishes the yearbook entitled Public Russian Opinion in Russian and English. Contents of this book have often been published in various media in the past.

German-language publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yuri Alexandrovich Levada: Социологические проблемы критики религии: Автореферат дис. на соискание учёной степени доктора философских наук / АН СССР. Ин-т философии. Moscow, 1964. 27 pp.
personal data
SURNAME Levada, Yuri Alexandrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Левада, Юрий Александрович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian sociologist and political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Vinnytsia
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 2006
Place of death Moscow