vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #592 / Special reports / Reading article...

Only 15 percent of Russians are going to celebrate the upcoming Day of People’s Unity on November 4, a recent opinion poll by the Yuri Levada Analytical Center showed.

59 percent of the polled people said they do not intend to celebrate any holiday, revealed the poll, which was conducted among 1,600 respondents throughout Russia in mid-October.

Among those who will celebrate the holiday are mostly manager sector officials, workers, military men and policemen by occupation, as well as those who reside in big cities and towns aged less than 25, with a higher education and a total monthly income of over 18,000 rubles ($720).

Meanwhile, 23 percent of the polled said they will celebrate the Great October Revolution Day on November 7, which used to be the main Soviet holiday until it was cancelled in 1996. These are mostly unemployed and pensioners aged over 55, residing in rural areas and having a total monthly income under 6,000 rubles ($240).

Interestingly enough, only about a fourth of all surveyed, or 23 percent, gave the correct name of the holiday, which is 3 percent more than the number of those who correctly named the holiday in last year’s poll and three times more than the corresponding number in 2005.

Almost half of the respondents, 48 percent, had difficulty naming the holiday, while 22 percent called it the Holiday of Reconciliation and Accord, the poll results showed.

The Holiday of Reconciliation and Accord was introduced in Russia in 1996 by President Boris Yeltsin instead of the Great October Revolution Day, the main Soviet holiday. In 2004, President Vladimir Putin issued a law which cancelled the November 7 holiday and replaced it with Day of People’s Unity on November 4.

According to the poll, 58 percent of the interviewed people do not approve of canceling the October Revolution Day, while 27 percent have the opposite opinion.