Moscow, 3 November: The majority of Russians believe that in the future repressions and dictatorship in our country are unlikely, sociologists' research has shown.

Sixty-two per cent of Russians do not believe in the possibility of a dictatorship and mass repressions in our country in the future, although back in 2006 76 per cent of respondents said this, sociologists from VTsIOM (the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Centre) told Interfax today, according to the results of a poll carried out at the end of October in 140 locations in 42 regions, territories and republics of the Russian Federation.

Of those polled, 18 per cent believe in the reality of repressions, a further 4 per cent believe that they will certainly happen or are already happening.

However, in comparison with 2006, there are three times as many of those who had difficulty in making such predictions (from 5 to 16 per cent).

Mass repressions seem the most likely in our country to Russians aged 35-54 years (24-25 per cent).

At the same time, the majority of Russians (59 per cent) are sure that political repressions on the part of the authorities towards citizens are unacceptable in principle. Of those polled, 31 per cent expressed the opposite point of view: 5 per cent of them believe repressions entirely acceptable and 26 per cent believe that they are possible but only in extreme cases.

From the point of view of our compatriots, during the last century, political repressions in our country were the most large-scale under Lenin (47 per cent) and Stalin (83 per cent). This phenomenon was limited under Khrushchev (42 per cent), Brezhnev (44 per cent) and Andropov (35 per cent).

During later regimes (beginning from Gorbachev's era), in Russians' opinions, there were virtually no repressions (40-58 per cent). Furthermore, most often respondents pointed to the absence of them (repressions) during the years of Putin's and Medvedev's governing (56 and 58 per cent respectively).

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