Interfax: More than half of Russia can’t name any Russians awarded Noble [sic] Prize – poll

Map of Western CIS/FSU and European Environs

MOSCOW. Oct 25 (Interfax) – Russians are quite well-aware of the Noble Prize but only one in five follows news about it, sociologists said.

According to the poll held by the Public Opinion Foundation in 43 Russian regions, 44% of 1,500 respondents are aware that the Noble [sic] Prize exists, other 42% heard about it, while 10% learnt about the prize during the survey.

Only 18% of respondents follow who the Noble [sic] Prize – the majority are Moscow residents (74%), residents of cities with populations over a million (74%), residents of cities with populations of up to one million (25%), people with a higher education (32%), people over 60 years old (25%) as well as people of the 21st century (23%), the poll showed.

Russians are firstly interested in achievements of prize winners in physiology and medicine (8%), physics (7%), literature and peace (5% each), chemistry (3%) and economy (2%).

However, 66% of respondents failed to name at least one foreign Noble [sic] Prize winner. At the same time, 8% refereed to Obama, 4% named Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Alice Munro and others and 1% named Iosif Brodsky.

When asked about Russians who have won the Noble [sic] Prize, 9% said Zhores Alferov, 7% Mikhail Gorbachev, 6% Andrei Sakharov, 3% Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 2% Mikhail Sholokhov. Boris Pasternak, Iosif Brodsky, Ivan Bunin, Pyotr Kapitsa, Grigory Perelman and Ivan Pavlov were named by 1% each. Over a half (54%) admitted they did not know a single Russian Noble Prize winner.

When asked whether the process to select Noble [sic] Prize winners was fair, 41% failed to respond, 31% said they trusted the decisions of the Noble committee and 14% said they did not believe the procedure was fair.

Four percent of these skeptical respondents believe that the selection of winners is motivated by greed (4%) and politics (2%). Two percent say that decisions are biased and another 2% exclaimed “there is nothing fair now” and referred to Obama getting the Noble [sic] Peace Prize as an example “because Obama got the Peace Prize but he conducts military operations.”

When asked about the potential of Russians to get the Noble [sic] Prize, 26% believe that Russia has many decent people, for instance Russian President Vladimir Putin (3%), Mikhail Kalashnikov, Svyatoslav Fyodorov, Sergei Shoigu (3%), Leonid Roshal (1%), Alfyorov (1%) and others. Meanwhile, 21% think that Russia has people, who have contributed considerably to science, culture or public life, but few, and 3% said that Russia does not have people who could compete for the Noble [sic] Prize and 51% failed to answer.

Those who said that Russia has few or no potential Noble [sic] Prize winners said that Russia had poor conditions for development in science (5%) brain drain (4%), 2% said that the authority of science was declining and scientists can not conduct research – “people do not have the opportunity to push trough” and “because they are not allowed to develop and are kept in within bounds.” Meanwhile, 1% said that few people in the world deserved the Noble [sic] Prize.

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