Half of Russians ready to fight for homeland – poll

(Interfax – MOSCOW, June 21, 2013) Russians are paying tribute to their compatriots who saved the country in World War Two. They are also ready to fight for their homeland if a new war starts, Levada Center told Interfax in comment on a poll held before the Day of Remembrance and Grief.

Some 52% of the respondents said the Soviet people won that war; 6% said it was Joseph Stalin, and 5% named the Communist Party and the Soviet administration as a whole.

Thirty-three percent argued that it was a common victory.

Half of the respondents said they were ready to fight for their homeland in a new war: 29% would agree to conscription and 20% would volunteer to fight. Nine percent would move to a safe country and 19% doubted they could be mobilized. Twenty-three percent could not answer the question.

Twenty-one percent of the respondents blamed Stalin for the millions of casualties, and 13% accused the Communist Party and the national administration (30% and 20% correspondingly last year).

Thirty-seven percent put the blame on Germany (28% a year ago), and 13% said it was everyone’s fault.

Respondents explained huge losses and defeats of the first months of the war with the sudden attack of the enemy (37%) and unpreparedness for the invasion (33%). Thirty percent said the Red Army command was depleted by Stalin’s repressions and purges of the late 1930s; 25% argued that the Soviet army was not trained and armed as well as the German forces, and another quarter said the Soviet Union was late to put the economy on a war footing and to prepare for the war in general.

The total percentage is higher than 100% as the respondents could choose several answers.

Russia observes the Day of Remembrance and Grief on June 22, the day of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. The holiday was established by first Russian President Boris Yeltsin on June 8, 1996.