Russians much happier than in the 1990s – poll

Map of Western CIS/FSU and European Environs

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – November 12, 2013)  Over three-fourths of Russians say they are happy, a figure that has grown by a third in the last two decades, a recent poll said.

According to a study by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM), 76 percent of Russians said they were happy, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday, citing VTsIOM head Valery Fyodorov as saying at a press conference.

The number of people who say they are happy has grown by 32 percent since 1990, according to Fyodorov, from 44 percent to 76 percent.

The economic crisis dampened the numbers slightly, with 77 percent of Russians saying they were happy in 2008.

Meanwhile the number of Russians saying they were unhappy has plummeted. According to Fyodorov, the number of unhappy Russians reached its peak of 36 percent in 1992 during free-market economic reforms.

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